Last year, the Graph Foundation had to rethink how it develops and distributes its Open Native Graph Database (ONgDB) after it settled a trademark and copyright claim by database biz Neo4j.

The Graph Foundation [1]agreed [PDF] it would no longer claim specific versions of ONgDB, its Neo4j Enterprise Edition fork, are a "100 percent free and open source version" of Neo4J EE. And last month, two other companies challenged by Neo4j – PureThink and iGov – were also required by a court ruling to make similar concessions.

ONgDB is forked from Neo4j EE, which in May 2018 dropped the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) and adopted a new license that incorporates the AGPLv3 alongside additional limitations spelled out in the Commons Clause license. This new Neo4j EE license forbade non-paying users of the software from reselling the code or offering some support services, and thus is not open source as defined by the Open Source Initiative.

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The Graph Foundation, PureThink, and iGov offered ONgDB as a "free and open source" version of Neo4j in the hope of winning customers who preferred an open-source license. That made it more challenging for Neo4j to compete.

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So in 2018 and 2019 Neo4j and its Swedish subsidiary pursued legal claims against the respective firms and their principals for trademark and copyright infringement, among other things.

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The Graph Foundation [9]settled [PDF] in February 2021 as the company explained in a [10]blog post . The organization discontinued support for ONgDB versions 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6. And it released ONgDB 1.0 in their place as a fork of AGPLv3 licensed Neo4j EE version 3.4.0.rc02.

Last May, the judge hearing the claims against PureThink, and iGov granted Neo4j's motion for [11]partial summary judgment [PDF] and forbade the defendants from infringing on the company's Neo4j trademark and from advertising ONgDB "as a free and open source drop-in replacement of Neo4j Enterprise Edition…"

The defendants appealed, and in February the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that the company's "statements regarding ONgDB as 'free and open source' versions of Neo4j EE are false."

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On Thursday, the Open Source Initiative, which oversees the [13]Open Source Definition and the licenses based on the OSD, celebrated the appeals court decision.

"Stop saying Open Source when it's not," the organization said in a [14]blog post . "The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently affirmed a lower court decision concluding what we’ve always known: that it’s false advertising to claim that software is 'open source' when it’s not licensed under an open source license."

In an email to The Register , Bruce Perens, creator of the Open Source Definition and open-source pioneer, observed, "This is interesting because the court enforced the 'Open Source' term even though it is not registered with USPTO as a trademark (we had no lawyers who would help us, or money, back then). This recognizes it as a technical claim which can be fraudulent when misused."

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Perens added that it's no surprise the court disallowed the removal of copyright holder Neo4j's Commons Clause terms.

"Even though the AGPL has some verbiage that allows such a removal, licenses are not all-powerful," he said. "They are really only good for enforcing that a party is a copyright infringer if they don't follow the terms. And the copyright holder themselves can not be an infringer of a work that they own, only that of others." ®

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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/03/17/neo4j.pdf

[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YjQR-lItC6kgWsDp2tdTWwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YjQR-lItC6kgWsDp2tdTWwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YjQR-lItC6kgWsDp2tdTWwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/17/neo4j_325m_funding/

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/24/postgres_kubernetes_danger/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/27/neo4j_joins_the_dbaas_club/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/20/neo4j_adds_graph_embeddings_to/

[9] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.349025/gov.uscourts.cand.349025.110.0_1.pdf

[10] https://www.graphfoundation.org/blog/graph-foundation-resolution-for-future-ongdb-development/

[11] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.335295/gov.uscourts.cand.335295.118.0.pdf

[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YjQR-lItC6kgWsDp2tdTWwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[13] https://opensource.org/osd

[14] https://opensource.org/court-affirms-its-false-advertising-to-claim-software-is-open-source-when-its-not

[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YjQR-lItC6kgWsDp2tdTWwAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/