Let’s say I have published some code, and have relinquished all copyright interest to that code by some extremely permissive license (e.g. unlicense).
Can a corporation take my code, republish it under a proprietary license, then sue me for being in breach of that new license?
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If you can prove that you published the code prior to when they did and you had no access to it when it was unreleased then you can counter plea that they took it from you.
The result is a open/shut case where they will end up paying all legal fees (plus reimbursement for slander if applicable) and the only cost to you is the time spent defending yourself.
If the code is stored online and both parties are in the USA then this will fall under OCILLA which means that they first need to notify you (with a DMCA takedown request) and give you the chance to take it offline. You then have the chance to counter file and then if you were in the clear (or don’t hear back in 2/3 weeks) you can put the code up again.
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A license generally affects you when you acquire, use, or distribute a piece of software that comes with the license. If you never acquire, use or distribute Evil Corp’s version of your project, then there’s simply no way any sane license they apply to it could possibly affect you.
Now, if they release a modified version of your project under a proprietary license, and you do something like incorporate their improvements into your permissively licensed version, then Evil Corp has every right to come after you for that. But as long as you don’t do anything silly like that, you should have nothing to worry about.
The only way that a copyright can be created is by creating a work. If you create the software, you have the copyright. If you then relinquish the copyright (although I’m not quite sure if that is really possible), then there is no copyright for the work, and there is no possibility of creating one. So nobody can sue you successfully.
Of course they can sue you. Anybody can sue you if they feel like it.
A license agreement is a kind of contract. Wikipedia writes:
In order for a contract to be formed, the parties must reach mutual assent (also called a meeting of the minds). This is typically reached through offer and an acceptance which does not vary the offer’s terms, which is known as the “mirror image rule”.
That is, unless you sign (or otherwise accept) the offered license, no contract is formed, and nothing can be breached … and unless you wanted to do something with the proprietary code, there is no reason for you to accept such an agreement.
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