Defensive termination

{{Licensing of patents}}

Defensive termination is a form of implicit cross licensing of patent or other intellectual property rights. Consider a case where company A licenses patent A to company B. One of the conditions of the license agreement is that if company B should ever sue company A for infringing one of company B's own patents, such as patent B, then Company A can terminate the license to patent A. Thus company A would be able to counter sue company B for infringing patent A. This is a strong incentive to prevent company B from suing company A for any future patent it might receive after it has licensed patent A.{{Cite web |url=http://www.rosenlaw.com/DefiningOpenStandards.pdf |title=Lawrence Rosen, "Defining Open Standards", p 5. |access-date=2008-03-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080513144435/http://www.rosenlaw.com/DefiningOpenStandards.pdf |archive-date=2008-05-13 |url-status=dead }}

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, for example, has a defensive termination clause built into its "Eco-Patent Commons".{{Cite web |url=http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=MTU1OQ&doOpen=1&ClickMenu=LeftMenu |title=Eco-Patent Commons Overview |access-date=2008-03-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080319031934/http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=MTU1OQ&doOpen=1&ClickMenu=LeftMenu |archive-date=2008-03-19 |url-status=dead }} The Apache 2.0 License also includes a defensive termination clause.{{Cite web|url=https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt|title=Apache 2.0 license|last=|first=|date=|website=Apache.org|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040402003353/http://www.apache.org:80/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt |archive-date=2004-04-02 |access-date=}}