Ask HN: Who owns the copyright of some code a now defunct company wrote? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who owns the copyright of some code a now defunct company wrote?

3 pointsdbolkensteyn5 comments

Assume a startup launched a successful open source GPL project but failed to monetize it and closed shop without finding an acquirer for its assets.

What happens to the copyright of that code? 1. Does it get transferred to the shareholders, who would then all have to agree with each other to be able to relicense one day? 2. Does it fall into public domain? 3. The copyright is transferred to the state? 4. It falls into some no man's land and never can be relicensed? 5. Maybe that's a question that must get an explicit answer as part of the winding down procedure? 6. Something else?

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I am not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice.

The copyright is held until it expires. If the code is explicitly GPL, then you can still use it - but you can't change the license or remove the copyright, and you have to abide by the clauses in the GPL version used. There are organizations that might sue to enforce the GPL license, even if the original copyright holders might not because they are defunct.

Note that someone owns that copyright, because someone owns the IPR of that company, even if it is defunct. It might be worth checking to see what company bought their intellectual property, or who the founders are (they may be the IPR holders too). It's a big longshot, but you might get permission to relicense the code under a different Open Source license, or a transfer of the copyright.

> There are organizations that might sue to enforce the GPL license, even if the original copyright holders might not because they are defunct.

This is exactly what I'd like to dig into further. Who else besides the copyright owner has the legitimacy to enforce the GPL?

Afterall, how can a random external entity know whether or not I have a legitimate non-GPL, commercial, license granted by the copyright holder? There are many dual licensed GPL projects out there.

> Note that someone owns that copyright, because someone owns the IPR of that company, even if it is defunct.

This is very interesting as well. So basically you're saying that as part of the closing of the company, the IPR must be transfer to some other entity/individual.

Why do you want to know?

Do you want to use the GPL project?

Do you want to modify and redistribute the GPL project?

Do you want to modify and redistribute the project using other license like MIT or closed source?

I'd like to know if it still could bring me in trouble to embed the code in a commercial closed source application and no longer comply with the GPL and keep the whole thing closed source.

You may be lucky, and perhaps nobody will notice, or nobody will care, but it's a risk. Somewhere out there there is someone that owns the copyright and may get angry or just want a few bucks.

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