Please note that this discussion has been continued on the page ...Introduction
Background
The licenses governing the Intellectual Property (IP) of the openEHR Foundation need to be modernised. Commercial users wishing to base products upon openEHR have raised this matter with the Board and it is accepted a comprehensive revision is needed. The IP status of archetypes has also been raised as a potential issue in standards circles. The main needs are:
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- Patenting should not even enter into our thought processes when it comes to looking at licenses for archetypes and templates. Even in a jurisdiction with
broad definitions for patentable subject matter, there is no possible way an artifact such as an archetype could possibly be patentable. This is for a whole bunch
of reasons, including novelty (archetypes are essentially documentation of common medical knowledge), but mainly the fact that it is neither
a manufactured item, nor even an algorithmic process. So don't even worry about it. And even if you want to worry about it, the reality is that
it doesn't matter what copyright license you put on an archetype - if someone wanted to try to patent something in this area (perhaps a generic implementation
algorithm for archetypes) - they can do it without any reference to specific archetypes, hence the license is irrelevant. - You can't solve everything with the law - commercial entities should want to maintain compatibility with offically published archetypes because
the benefits of sharing/interoperability/community involvement outweigh any possible benefits they might get by keeping them secret. - Custom changes to common licenses are evil. Either CC-BY-SA or CC-BY - not CC-BY-SA with changes.