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Comment by hdra | Hacker News Reader

From what I understood, It is not a patent on React. As far as I can tell nothing about React is patented... and that is not the discussion over the past few days has been about.

This whole shebang has nothing to do with React itself, or the "technology" that React uses or anything, but more about the way many FB's open source libraries are licensed, one of which is React.

The license specify that you are free to use React as you would use a BSD licensed software, provided that you never sue FB for a patent. That means, if you use React, and you happen to own a patent for something that FB utilises, you can't sue FB without losing your React license. So, your option is either suck it up and let FB use your patented thing for free, or rewrite your software to take React out of it, and then proceed with the lawsuit.

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> That means, if you use React, and you happen to own a patent for something that FB utilises, you can't sue FB without losing your React license.

Correction: Without losing your license to use any patents on React. Which...

> As far as I can tell nothing about React is patented...

I agree. Which means the entire issue is a huge paper tiger; you lose your right to use something that doesn't seem to exist.

I wouldn't say it's entirely paper tiger though, given that it also discourage you from exercising any patent you have against Facebook, no matter how legitimate the patent is.

I'm neither a native English speaker nor a lawyer to really understand the wording in the legalese, or if it only cover software patent or patents in general, but I think that clause is pretty broad.

Here's the thing:

If you have a potential patent claim against Facebook (or any other large entity) you know that they will, as a matter of course, dig through their enormous stockpile of patents looking for some counter-claims to make the second you file. Given the size of that stockpile, they're probably going to end up with a sizeable stack, so you need to engage in some serious due diligence before filing to evaluate the strength of your claims and the strength of their likely claims.

All the React patent grant means is that, IF this happens, they can add any React-based patents to the pile, if any exist. I rather suspect that there are no React-based patents, but it doesn't really matter if they are, because statistically speaking, it's not going to materially change the size of the stack. (Not using React entirely also won't materially change the size of the stack; any hypothetical React patents probably apply to whatever hypothetical non-React tech you used instead.)

> it also discourage you from exercising any patent you have against Facebook

No, what discourages you from exercising a patent against Facebook is that they're Facebook, and they have vastly more money, lawyers, and patents than you do. The potential React patents are the least of your worries.

If you have a patent against Facebook, let's face it, that patent claim is going to be bigger than React ever can be. The cost of switching out a JS framework would be well worth the benefits of taking a legitimate patent claim on FB.

> The license specify that you are free to use React as you would use a BSD licensed software, provided that you never sue FB for a patent.

Only if something in React is patented. As I read it, only the patent license is revoked if you sue Facebook, so if nothing in React is patented then the patent license is superfluous anyway and you should have nothing to worry about.

The issue with the Apache license seems to be that the Apache license itself contains a similar patent license with a similar revocation clause (if you sue anyone, but only if you sue them over the Apache licensed software). I presume (not a lawyer) this means the licenses are incompatible, and Facebook's software can't be used in an Apache licensed product.

> A "Necessary Claim" is a claim of a patent owned by Facebook that is necessarily infringed by the Software standing alone.

This seems to support your point. But it's pretty obscure legalese.

As others have noted, you CAN sue Facebook if they infringe any of your patents, but then they could counter-sue you for any patents Facebook could have on React.

In other words: if you don't sue us, you don't need to care if we have a patent that covers some React mechanism. If you want to sue us, you should first check if we have any React-related patents we could use against you.

Also, you can countersue Facebook as long as you don't sue over patents you have on React. You also can't sue others over patents on React (without losing the grant).

Also more importantly, the conditions don't apply to the BSD license. The patent grant is a separate patent license on top of the copyright license. The license the patent grant refers to is the patent grant itself.

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