Our Approach to Licensing
The Foundation's primary interest in its intellectual property rights is the interest in preventing others from taking its knowledge and ideas and imposing restrictions on their use for financial gain. The Foundation has appointed an intellectual property committee to consider the best and least expensive means of accomplishing that end. The licensing language below is our starting point. If you would like to contribute to our efforts please feel free to contact us with your open source ideas.
The Open Access License
The Open Source Medicine Foundation grants to all persons and institutions desiring to use the unique ideas and knowledge resulting from research conducted by the Foundation or funded in whole or in part by the Foundation a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual license to use its ideas and knowledge to make, use and distribute products, for free or for commercial gain, subject to proper attribution to the Open Source Medicine Foundation as the source of the ideas and knowledge. No person using the ideas or knowledge of the Foundation as described herein shall have the right to seek to secure any government sponsored restriction on the free and open use of such ideas or knowledge or derivative works by others, including by patent, trademark, copyright, or through any other method of blocking or restricting the free and unrestricted flow of ideas and knowledge.
The Foundation reserves the right to challenge the validity of any patent, trademark, copyright, or other claim of ownership of any idea or knowledge of the Foundation as described herein and to seek equitable relief including injunction and the recovery of damages for conversion, and the possible imposition of constructive trust against any violator of this license.
The Foundation explicitly does not release its ideas or knowledge to the public domain, but holds all of its ideas and knowledge for release solely under the terms of the above described license.