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by akie 3047 days ago
Someone on Reddit argued that the new legal situation is worse because the PATENTS clause provided protection against litigation unless you sued Facebook first. Licensing under MIT, s/he argued, theoretically opens you up to litigation at any time IF Facebook decides to enforce any patents. So I was wondering: as far as you know, does Facebook have any patents on React or React Native?
2 comments

Some lawyers think the language used in the MIT license implies a patent grant limited to the use of the licensed software. They think it would be difficult for the licensor to give a license on the software from one hand, and claim a patent infringement on the same software from the other hand, but as far as I know, this was never tested in court.
Not to mention the question that the older language had a perpetual patent license for anyone using the software (subject to termination under the now much-discussed rare circumstance of suing FB).

So long as you were using the software under those conditions, it would be an interesting argument for how that patent license could now be unilaterally rescinded. (The new license doesn't say anything about it.)