[Asterisk-Users] Re: [Asterisk-Dev] Free G.729 ready for download

[Peter Svensson]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004, Steve Underwood wrote:

> >On Sat, 25 Sep 2004, Steve Underwood wrote:
> >I am not a lawyer, nor even a US citizen. Talking to someone who is both 
> >may be a good idea.
> >  
> >
> What is the relevance of being a US citizen? Copyright rules are largely 
> global.

There are two different major sets of copyright laws, depending on which 
treaty they were derived from. They are not always compatible. They differ 
in such points as whether you can transfer your copyright or merely assign 
the rights granted by it. 

> >Unless otherwise granted by the copyright holder, by default the copyright 
> >of a derived work (in the copyright legan sense) is held by the owner of 
> >the original copyright and not the crator of the derived work. So no, the 
> >patches are owned by Intel as well.
> >  
> >
> But the patches aren't a derived work. That is the value they have here. 
> There are an independant adjunct work.

According to most lawyers a patch _is_ a derived work in nearly all 
circumstances. E.g. a novel based on the characters from a novel by 
another author is a derived work.

If you are producing copies of just about anything you really need to 
speak to your lawyer to be safe. The excpetion possibly being open source 
stuff based soley on open source stuff.

Anyway, this is getting too far off topic for this list. Mea culpa.

Peter