Copyleft: Licensing collaborative works in the digital age

Authors who wish to dedicate their works to the public may think they have no need for copyright or other intellectual property rights. However, if subsequent authors make contributions to an original author's work, those subsequent authors might be entitled to assert proprietary rights in their contributions, thereby defeating the intent of the original author to dedicate his work to the public. The GNU Project is a worldwide collaborative effort to develop high quality software and make it available to the general public. To ensure unrestricted public access, the GNU Project licenses its software under the GNU General Public License ("GPL"), which prevents users from establishing proprietary rights in either the works themselves or subsequent versions thereof. Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project, refers to this type of agreement as "copyleft. " In this note, Ira Heffan analyzes the enforceability of the GNU GPL by analogy to shrinkwrap and shareware license agreements. He describes and analyzes the GNU GPL and concludes that it is enforceable. He contends that copyleft is useful for other collaborative works distributed electronically because copyleft assures the works' continued availability to the public.