Open Hardware H2O Licensing

Discussion

Cesar Harada:

"A robust license acts as an”intellectual currency” to exchange “intellectual property” between Protei INC and Open-H2O. It is the license that both connects and differentiate Protei INC and Open-H2O, since Open_H2O will be developing a Technology in the non-profit world, while Protei INC would be manufacturing a Product in the commercial world.

The Open Hardware H2O is intended to invite anyone to use, modify or distribute Protei technology for free in exchange of crediting the authors and contributing to the Open_H2O community. Protei would be the first technology licensed under Open Hardware H2O but any technology that fulfils the mission of Open-H2O of “developing Open Technologies to explore and protect the oceans” would be eligible to that license and the support of the Open-H2O community.

This license should provide all the legal basics that an inventor that has a technology that he/she wants to develop and licence as open hardware for the environment would want to see covered. So there is the IP specified above but also have a liability disclaimer in case of accident or misuse, environmental considerations and adaptations to specific rules that apply to the aquatic environment, especially in international waters. This license is currently under development and I will update this article when the first version of our license Open Hardware H2O license is released.

Use of a traditional trademark, quality control authorship

This may sound slightly strange but as much as we want to give away a lot of the control of who does what with the Protei technology, being able to modify and commercialise it, I reserve myself the right to decide what is “Protei” and what is not. As the original inventor of the technology, I recognise the contribution of the Open-H2O community to have contributed to the development of Protei. I invented the technology and the name, and I remain the owner of the trademark “Protei”, registered at the US Trademark office. I did not do this because I am a control freak, I do this for the integrity of the community and quality control of the work produced. Granting the name “Protei” to a prototype or product is a like a seal of approval, a quality label. I did not invent this, I learned it from Arduino." (http://www.cesarharada.com/protei-inc-and-open-h2o/)