Companies should be required to maintain a stash of plans and source code which is automatically released upon the company stopping operations, unless the IP is bought.
It’s always bought on liquidation. The creditors require it to be sold to legally satisfy them. What’s worse is that the IP may only be licensed in the first place.
Novell was re-awarded OS code which it sold – a term I use based on talking to people in the room on both the seller and buyer side of the negotiation table at the time, but merely second-hand knowledge. Novell was awarded ownership as the fact of the sale became a poker chip in a US$5bn lawsuit that could be refuted to give an advantage to one adversary in that lawsuit.
Novell hasn’t done a thing with it in 20 years. The code is essentially dead because it would cost too much to restart and update.
This was how the original Unix died, and doesn’t violate your plan. Counterexampled?
Companies should be required to maintain a stash of plans and source code which is automatically released upon the company stopping operations, unless the IP is bought.
It’s always bought on liquidation. The creditors require it to be sold to legally satisfy them. What’s worse is that the IP may only be licensed in the first place.
Novell was re-awarded OS code which it sold – a term I use based on talking to people in the room on both the seller and buyer side of the negotiation table at the time, but merely second-hand knowledge. Novell was awarded ownership as the fact of the sale became a poker chip in a US$5bn lawsuit that could be refuted to give an advantage to one adversary in that lawsuit.
Novell hasn’t done a thing with it in 20 years. The code is essentially dead because it would cost too much to restart and update.
This was how the original Unix died, and doesn’t violate your plan. Counterexampled?