Who owns the Intellectual Property of items designed using the free online version of OnShape?

abraham_phillips

As I understand it, the person holding the free subscription and modeling the part own the Intellectual Property. That being said, OnShape will not police the internet to make sure someone hasn't pirated ideas and is selling someone else designs.

Is this understanding accurate?

Or are users openly sharing ideas without concern for how those ideas are used? Does everyone just agree that anyone could make a  business out of anyone else's ideas?

Thanks,
Abe

bradley_sauln

I would start by taking a look at our FAQ: https://www.onshape.com/faqs. The last section under "Availability & Security" should help clarify things.

ilya_baran

Our terms of use are the final word for this: https://www.onshape.com/terms-of-use   Section 1g is particularly relevant.
I am not a lawyer; here's my personal interpretation:
1. You own the copyright (other kinds of IP are less relevant)
2. Onshape doesn't police the internet
3. When you make a public document, you're automatically granting a free MIT-style license to your work (Onshape's TOS are that way because otherwise, an unsuspecting user making a copy of a public document would be a copyright violation) UNLESS you include a tab named "LICENSE" that specifies a different license (even with such a tab, for a public document, Onshape gets a free pass for marketing).

badmechanic

This seems to have changed in 2018 so that users cannot specify a LICENSE file anymore.

I'm not sure why that  happened. GitHub doesn't restrict license types at all even today.

It would be nice if there was at least custom license support for an approved set of open source licences.