Open Source Licenses with Patent Protection

Patent Protection in Open Source Licenses

Some open source licenses include explicit patent grants, meaning that contributors automatically grant users a license to any patents that cover their contributions. This is an important but often overlooked aspect of license choice.

Why Patent Protection Matters

Without an explicit patent grant, a contributor could theoretically:

1. Contribute code to an open source project
2. Obtain a patent covering that contribution
3. Sue users of the project for patent infringement

An explicit patent grant prevents this scenario by including a patent license alongside the copyright license.

Licenses with Explicit Patent Grants

License	Patent Grant	Patent Retaliation
Apache-2.0	Yes (Section 3)	Yes — patent license terminates if you file a patent suit
GPL-3.0	Yes (Section 11)	Yes — implicit through license termination
AGPL-3.0	Yes (same as GPL-3.0)	Yes
LGPL-3.0	Yes (inherits from GPL-3.0)	Yes
MPL-2.0	Yes (Section 2.1)	Yes (Section 5.2)
EPL-2.0	Yes	Yes

Licenses WITHOUT Patent Grants

License	Patent Protection
MIT	No explicit grant (implied by some interpretations)
BSD-2-Clause	No
BSD-3-Clause	No
ISC	No
Unlicense	No

Patent Retaliation Clauses

Several licenses include "patent retaliation" provisions: if a licensee sues anyone for patent infringement related to the software, their license to the software is automatically terminated. Apache-2.0, GPL-3.0, and MPL-2.0 all include this provision.

Practical Recommendations

• Individual developers — MIT or ISC is usually fine; patent risk is low for small projects
• Corporate contributions — Apache-2.0 is strongly preferred because of its explicit patent grant
• Standard implementations — Apache-2.0 or a patent pledge is essential when implementing standards that may be covered by patents
• Large ecosystems — Projects like Kubernetes, TensorFlow, and Android chose Apache-2.0 specifically for patent protection