#SchCP intellectual property policy
SchCP follows the licensing model of the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP): permissive terms for code, attribution terms for documents, and a royalty-free patent commitment so that anyone can implement the protocol.
| Item | Terms |
|---|---|
| Software (reference implementation, tests, examples) | Apache 2.0 |
| Documentation (spec, schemas, whitepaper, research, reviews) | CC-BY-4.0 |
| Patents | Royalty-free licence under Necessary Claims for compliant implementations of a Final Specification (below) |
| Name | "SchCP" and "Scheduling Context Protocol" identify this specification; see Trademarks below |
#Patents
- Licence. Each contributor grants every implementer a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free licence under that contributor's Necessary Claims to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and distribute compliant implementations of a Final Specification.
- Necessary Claims are patent claims that would necessarily be infringed by implementing the normative (MUST / REQUIRED) parts of a Final Specification, where no commercially reasonable non-infringing alternative exists. Claims covering enabling technologies (payment rails, operating systems, cryptographic primitives) or optional parts of the specification are not Necessary Claims.
- Disclosure. While a specification is a Draft, contributors must disclose any patent or application they know contains Necessary Claims, so the text can be changed to avoid it before it becomes Final.
- Defensive suspension. The licence ends for anyone who sues a contributor or implementer claiming that a compliant implementation infringes their patent.
- Final Specification means a version published as final in
spec/. Versions marked draft (currently all of them, including v0.2) are Drafts.
Apache 2.0's own patent grant also applies to the code in this repository.
#Trademarks
The names "SchCP" and "Scheduling Context Protocol" may be used to describe implementations that follow the specification. Claims of conformance or certification are reserved for implementations that pass the published conformance suite, once one exists.
#Contributions
By contributing, you agree that your contribution is licensed under the terms above (Apache 2.0 for code, CC-BY-4.0 for documents) and that the patent commitment above applies to it.