united-states software licensing
Will the license I am writing hold up?
<p>I am writing a software license for my software that I wrote and I wondering if I could take someone to court if, for example, they shared the source code.
My goal is to have a license that you can share the software but not the source code.
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bUxLck9Ay84-dMkzLLKioQrM2LWph-z6NjzWoc6KHGQ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bUxLck9Ay84-dMkzLLKioQrM2LWph-z6NjzWoc6KHGQ</a></p>

<p>This is a challenging license, because it is so unclear. If this were to go to court, the primary issue is likely to be &quot;what exactly is allowed?&quot;. As I suppose you know, nobody can copy anything of yours unless you give them permission. I cannot figure out from this what acts you intend to permit. The courts will follow some interpretive procedure to figure this out, though the procedure will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In the US, the defendant might move for <a href="https://www.federalrulesofcivilprocedure.org/frcp/title-vii-judgment/rule-56-summary-judgment/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">summary dismissal</a> because their copying was authorized. As a matter of law, the license cannot be said to clearly and effectively allow only that which you seem to want to allow. Since the license is ungrammatical at a number of points, the courts would have to struggle to assign a reasonable interpretation: why should they favor you over the licensee in this enterprise? The courts are supposed to be neutral, and not favor the plaintiff.</p>
<p>Paragraph 2 is legally null: you can't copyright a name. You're writing a bare license, not a contract, so there is no &quot;do X in exchange for Y&quot; hook that allows you to restrict the use of a name. (However, you could independently cook up a trademark scheme that would allow you to control use of the particular trademark).</p>
