Are people really worried about using React and ReactNative with the language that's in Facebook's PATENTS file?

I don’t know how much developers actually are worried about Facebook’s React patent license restrictions.

The purpose of this answer is to characterize those restrictions accurately.

The paragraph of the Additional Grant of Patent Rights that causes concern is the following:

The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, if you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents) initiate directly or indirectly, or take a direct financial interest in, any Patent Assertion: (i) against Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or corporate affiliates, (ii) against any party if such Patent Assertion arises in whole or in part from any software, technology, product or service of Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or corporate affiliates, or (iii) against any party relating to the Software. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or corporate affiliates files a lawsuit alleging patent infringement against you in the first instance, and you respond by filing a patent infringement counterclaim in that lawsuit against that party that is unrelated to the Software, the license granted hereunder will not terminate under section (i) of this paragraph due to such counterclaim.

To simplify: If you (or an affiliate) file a patent claim against, or a patent claim that involves a product or service of, Facebook (or an affiliate), or a patent claim that involves the React software, then your React patent license will terminate automatically.

Significance:

• To the extent that you are confident that you will not file such a patent claim, you can feel comfortable using React.
• If you anticipate that you may want or need to file such a claim (and that at the time such a claim is filed you will have pockets that are deep enough to pursue the claim), then the most prudent approach is not to use React.

People are worried, but should they be?

Facebook’s front end engineer Christopher (who happens to work with React and React Native almost exclusively) hosted an AMA on Hashnode. The first thing he did was to answer issues surrounding the react license issue.

AMA with Christopher Chedeau - Hashnode

Do give it a read. He covers some important things in his answer.

1. Why is facebook doing what its doing

2. Facebook’s press releases related to the issue

3. His overall opinion about the entire issue and how he feels about the way its been handled

Possibly yes, if you are worried about them infringing your patents and holding your software/website/app hostage for legal/financial negotiations. I will provide a usage case in which your business could be hurt because of the extra patents file.

Take a hospital which uses React and ReactNative in its booking website and app. Now someone at this hospital comes up with a patent related to remote surgery, which uses virtual reality in some form, a field which FB is investing in heavily. FB becomes interested in your patent and contacts the hospital asking it for permission to use the patent for free, leveraging the fact that they can hold the hospital’s booking system hostage, because if the hospital disagrees and decides to sue them, their license to the technology that powers their booking system will be revoked. Since the telesurgery patent isn’t going to be financially as important as the functioning of the booking system anyway, and hospital possibly can’t develop a whole new booking system or a business around the patent in a short time, it will be forced to come up to a patent usage agreement greatly in favor of FB.

Of course, the end scenario is case dependent; for example if the said hospital comes up with the cure of cancer, it becomes viable to register a legally separate entity dedicated to the development of cure of cancer where no FB patent will be used. Similarly, a company like Microsoft does not need to worry about using React in small projects such as a Skype app or something; if need be, they have the resources to replace it entirely with something that doesn’t use a single line of javascript.Or, on contrary, it makes little sense for a university to build its whole website upon React.

However, the problem with the patents file, as I see it, is that it is polluting the whole open source ecosystem. If you use a library that is dependent on a library that is dependent on an Apollo module which itself uses GraphQL in some fashion, your are still giving FB the patent infringement option. After a few years FB can start abusing this loophole and it will be too late for people to find out that FB is just another corporation with little concern for goodwill. Muddy waters.