Reasonable and Non-discriminatory Licensing - Excluding Costless Distribution Schemes

Excluding Costless Distribution Schemes

RAND terms exclude intangible goods which the producer may decide to distribute at no cost and where third parties may make further copies. Take for example a software package that is distributed at no cost and to which the developer wants to add support for a video format which requires a patent licence. If there is a licence which requires a tiny per-copy fee, the software project will not be able to avail of the licence. The licence may be called "(F)RAND", but the modalities discriminate against a whole category of intangible goods such as free software and freeware.

This form of discrimination can be similarly caused by common licence terms such as only applying to complete implementations of the licensed standard, limiting use to particular fields, or restricting redistribution. The Free Software Foundation suggests the term "uniform fee only" (UFO) to reflect that such "(F)RAND" licences are inherently discriminatory.

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