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ARTICLE · 17 NOVEMBER 2009

GPLv3 And Tech M&A

McCarthy Tétrault
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It has been a little more than two years since the Free Software Foundation updated the GNU General Public License with the release of GPLv3 in June 2007.

CanadaMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
George Takach
George Takach
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It has been a little more than two years since the Free Software Foundation updated the GNU General Public License with the release of GPLv3 in June 2007. This revision made several important and far-reaching changes in the licensing dynamics surrounding the use and distribution of the open source software (oss) subject to it, but perhaps none so important as those impacting on software patents. We all knew these changes would have a dramatic impact, and now we are seeing this in our tech M&A deals, where oss covered by GPLv3 is implicated.

In a nutshell, GPLv3 provides that when a software company uses oss covered by GPLv3, the rights they convey to downstream users include a patent licence necessary to exercise the rights the GPL is intended to give them. Thus, one of the objectives of GPLv3 was to ensure that software patents — much more prevalent in 2007 when GPLv3 was released, than in 1991 when GPLv2 was crafted — could not be used to defeat the purposes of

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