Ethical Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property (IP) law governs the type and extent of rights held by developers, inventors, artists and engineers over their creations, and includes the power to protect both a tangible creation and the idea behind the creation. This traditional legal protection—used frequently by large corporations to maintain their competitive advantage and high prices in pharmaceutical and tech markets—has the potential to be instrumental in the fight against corporate impunity for human rights and environmental abuse. By building ethical structures, values, and human rights conditions into IP licenses, creators of all kinds—from software developers to rocket scientists—can exercise agency over the impact their creations have on the world. Rather than release a new technology to the political and profit-driven whims of corporate and governmental actors, individual creators can control how their innovations interact with communities and the environment. While CAL believes ethical IP has a role to play across all IP mechanisms (patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright), we have focused so far on the development of ethical copyright licenses for software developers. The position, held by many in the tech industry, that software code development must be value-neutral, amoral, and apathetic does not immunize the industry from accountability for the activities made possible by new code or culpability for harm to people and the planet. Ethical IP is both a means of confronting this harm and of transferring authority from corporate giants back to individual tech workers, beginning with ethical open-source software licensing.

Software licensing is a method of copyright that allows licensees (users) to utilize the copyrighted code under specific conditions. The Ethical Source Movement promotes a pro-social and ethical alternative to traditional open-source licensing, focusing on justice and equity as essential components of thriving open source communities and projects. Together, CAL and our partners at the Organization for Ethical Source have developed a number of licenses and IP assignment clauses allowing tech workers to embed human rights and environmental conditions into their licenses. The licenses give tech workers several options, ranging from a license with the broad inclusion of human rights law, to an “expanded duty of care” license model, to assignment clauses with specific restrictions around issues of interest to tech workers (prohibiting use of the IP in ICE or Pentagon contracts, for example).

Ethical Intellectual Property Projects

We can’t share all of the things we’re working on, but here’s an example:

  • The Hippocratic License 3.0 is an ethical open source software license designed to: (1) offer software developers a license that clearly defines what kind of behavior a potential licensor must adhere to, by basing the ethical standards section of HL 3.0 in international human rights norms; (2) extend software developers the ability to add additional ethical standards clauses to further champion a variety of specific human rights causes; (3) provide software developers the most enforceable ethical open software license to date; and (4) create an opportunity for victims of human rights violations to seek legal remedy through a private right of action. To address the needs of the ethical open source movement, HL 3.0 set out to codify an objective set of ethical standards by utilizing already accepted human rights norms in its licensing language. HL 3.0’s Ethical Standards section, which outlines what behavior licensees shall and shall not engage in, is primarily derived from the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. We selected these human rights declarations and treaties as the basis for many of the ethical standards because the international community largely agrees upon their meanings and many of them have overlapping language related to human rights norms. While there may never be universal agreement about what is or is not ethical, the clauses listed in the Ethical Standards section of HL 3.0, are about as clear, robust, and broad as you will find in any ethical license. In addition to providing a clear list of ethical standards, HL 3.0 was also designed to offer software developers an opportunity to champion causes that mattered to them. This is accomplished by providing software developers with a number of additional clauses they can add to the Ethical Standards section of HL 3.0, called modules.

  • The CAL Copyright License (CCL) is an ethical license designed for any copyright holder looking to ensure their work is only used by those who contractually agree to abstain from human rights abuses. In developing the CCL, we still wanted to adhere to the same principles we used in developing HL 3.0 and the CC+CAL license: 1) using ethical behavior as consideration to becoming a licensee; and 2) creating a new avenue for the victims of human rights violations to seek remedy for the injustices done to them through a unique amalgamation of contract law, copyright law, and tort law. In fact, what makes this license unique from CAL’s other ethical licensing projects is its approach to the second principle, which utilizes third-party beneficiary contract language (developed in other CAL projects) and offers the greatest amount of protection for potential human rights victims of any ethical copyright license we know of. The CCL is available for anyone to use, and can be downloaded here, with instructions on how to use it to copyright your own work.

Ethical Intellectual Property Blog Posts

Featured
SFC v. Vizio: Third-Party Beneficiaries in Open Source Software Licenses?
SFC v. Vizio: Third-Party Beneficiaries in Open Source Software Licenses?

Most of us do not care how software runs, whether that software is on our computers, our televisions, or our toasters - we just need it to work. However, part of the reason open source software has expanded is because it's in an ecosystem where developers and maintainers are trying to look at the code, use it, modify it, improve it, and even redistribute it. In fact, this concept is so integral to open source software, that many open source software licenses demand that any projects derived from licensed work also be open source, and allow others to use it, copy it, modify it, and distribute it. So, if a company does not adhere to the terms of the license, can you, as a consumer who should have the ability to view the source code of your smart appliances, sue them for breach of contract? If you can, what does that mean for open source software licenses, including ethical open source software licenses, going forward?

Google Breaks Its Promise On A.I.—Ethical IP Licensing Would Have Made That Very Hard To Do
Google Breaks Its Promise On A.I.—Ethical IP Licensing Would Have Made That Very Hard To Do

Three years ago, we blogged about the successful campaign by Google tech workers to persuade the company to withdraw from Project Maven—a United States Department of Defense program aimed at using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to rapidly analyze and identify drone targets. More than 4,000 Google employees signed a letter to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, demanding that Google “not be in the business of war.” The internal revolt worked: Google declined to renew its contract for Project Maven and published a set of A.I. principles—including a vow that no future A.I. endeavor would be used for “weapons…whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.”

Advancing Ethical Licensing and the Launch of Hippocratic License 3.0
Advancing Ethical Licensing and the Launch of Hippocratic License 3.0

CAL, in partnership with the Organization for Ethical Source (OES), has launched Hippocratic License 3.0 (HL 3.0), an ethical open source software license designed to: (1) offer software developers a license that clearly defines what kind of behavior a potential licensor must adhere to, by basing the ethical standards section of HL 3.0 in international human rights norms; (2) extend software developers the ability to add additional ethical standards clauses to further champion a variety of specific human rights causes; (3) provide software developers the most enforceable ethical open software license to date; and (4) create an opportunity for victims of human rights violations to seek legal remedy through a private right of action.

Introducing Our New Staff Attorney Samee Haque, and And Why IP Law is the Perfect Bridge Between Ethics and Tech
Introducing Our New Staff Attorney Samee Haque, and And Why IP Law is the Perfect Bridge Between Ethics and Tech

CAL is continuing to expand its presence in the IP space with the addition of our newest staff attorney, Sameeul Haque. In this introductory blog, Samee discusses CAL’s work with Ethical Source, an organization dedicated to empowering those in the open source tech community to exercise their rights as developers to ensure that their software is used for social good and in service of human rights. You can reach Samee by email at sameeul@corpaccountabilitylab.org.

Introducing CAL IP Assignment Clauses
Introducing CAL IP Assignment Clauses

CAL creates outside-the-box legal mechanisms that give motivated individuals the ability to promote human rights norms by enforcing their own rights.

Google's AI Principles and the Battle for Humanity
Google's AI Principles and the Battle for Humanity

Earlier this year, advocates and tech workers successfully lobbied Google to abandon a project with the Pentagon, code-named “Project Maven.” Google’s role in the project was to provide artificial intelligence (AI) that would analyze massive amounts of surveillance data for drones. I imagine if you did a survey of human reactions to enlisting artificial intelligence to figure out who to kill with a drone, the average person would check the box next to “dystopic hellscape.”

How You Can Create a Better World: A Primer on Ethical Intellectual Property|PT. 3
How You Can Create a Better World: A Primer on Ethical Intellectual Property|PT. 3

In part 2, I described how the intellectual property (“IP”) morals clause has enormous potential for economic activism. It’s something that we badly need if we want to ensure that our own IP doesn’t end up fueling unethical supply chains, and it’s something that nobody currently uses.

How You Can Create a Better World: A Primer on Ethical Intellectual Property|Pt. 2
How You Can Create a Better World: A Primer on Ethical Intellectual Property|Pt. 2

In part 1, I described the creation of the +CAL copyright licenses. I explained how and why our licenses ensure that the people and environmental inputs that comprise global supply chains are protected by the same “duty of care” that we have as consumers in the United States. Wonky lawyers may be quick to see why this is big deal, but fortunately we’re not all wonky lawyers. In this part, I’m going to discuss in economic terms why our licenses are exciting and why they lay the groundwork for a new frontier in economic activism.

How You Can Create a Better World: A Primer on Ethical Intellectual Property| Pt. 1
How You Can Create a Better World: A Primer on Ethical Intellectual Property| Pt. 1

Background

In March 2017, I began working with CAL on a copyright license. Our intent was to create a license that could be used by anyone to condition the use of their copyrighted works on the user’s *contractually enforceable* promise to protect human rights and the environment across the supply chains in which the copyright is used. This is a three-part post is about the creation of the license, the discovery of some exciting new potential for intellectual property commons and economic activism, and the birth of a new folk hero of the commons named activistartmachine. You can shortcut to our software license here and our Creative Commons Plus license here.