Does an MIT license mean the code is safe to ship?

It means you have permission to copy and distribute the code. The MIT text does not contain the word patent at all, so it says nothing about whether shipping what the code does would infringe anyone's patent. Those are separate questions and only the first one is the license's to answer.

Does Apache 2.0 give me freedom to operate?

No. Apache 2.0 section 3 grants a real patent license, but only to claims licensable by that contributor that are necessarily infringed by their contribution. It cannot grant what a third party owns, and a third party who never contributed to the project is exactly who is most likely to hold an asserted patent.

What is a freedom-to-operate opinion?

It is a legal opinion in which a registered practitioner reads a specific product against the claims of patents in force in a given country and renders a view on infringement risk. It is specific to a product, a set of claims and a jurisdiction, and it is practising law, which is why no web page can give you one.

Is GPLv3's patent grant broader than Apache's?

They are scoped similarly. GPLv3 section 11 grants a license under the contributor's essential patent claims, defined as those owned or controlled by the contributor. It also excludes claims that would be infringed only as a consequence of further modification of the contributor version, so modifying the code far enough can move you outside the grant.

A License Is Not Freedom to Operate

Read from four license texts and 35 U.S.C. 271, all retrieved from their issuing sources. Every quotation on this page is verified against the cached text. Current as of 29 September 2026.

The distinction

A license is permission from one party, covering the rights that party holds. Freedom to operate is the question of whether anyone at all holds a patent your product would infringe. MIT and BSD 3-Clause never mention patents. Apache 2.0 and GPLv3 do, and both stop at the contributor's own claims.

Two different questions get answered by the same file, and only one of them is the license's to answer.

Can I copy this code is a copyright question, and the license answers it, subject to its own conditions. Can I ship the thing this code does without infringing somebody's patent is a different question, because of two words in the statute.

Infringement happens when someone acts "without authority". The full sentence: "Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention" within the United States infringes the patent. A license on a repository is authority over the claims its licensors own, control, or can otherwise license. It says nothing about claims held by anyone else, and the contributors to a dependency need not control every patent a finished product reads on.

Authority can also arise in ways no license mentions: a sublicense, a covenant not to sue, exhaustion, an implied license. Those are real doctrines, they are fact-specific, and this page does not reach them. They are a reason the question is bigger than the license file, not a reason it is smaller.

What the Four Texts Actually Say

Patent provisions in four license texts, read in full. As of 29 September 2026.
License	Express patent grant?	Scope of what is granted
MIT	No. The word does not appear	Copyright permission only: "to deal in the Software without restriction"
BSD 3-Clause	No. The word does not appear	Copyright permission only
Apache 2.0	Yes, section 3	"only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s)" alone or combined with the work
GPLv3	Yes, section 11	The contributor's "essential patent claims", meaning those "owned or controlled by the contributor"

The two silences are not grants and they are not refusals. They are a subject the document does not address. Whether an implied license or exhaustion arises on particular facts is a question of patent law those texts leave to background law, and this page does not answer it.

Even the Express Grants Stop at the Contributor

A contributor cannot grant what a stranger owns. Apache limits its grant to claims "licensable by such Contributor". GPLv3 limits its grant to claims "owned or controlled by the contributor". Both are real grants and both stop at the same edge. Note that the edge is the licenses' own defined Contributor, which reaches the entity on whose behalf a contribution was submitted and not merely the individual who typed it, and which still excludes every party that contributed nothing. A patent held by one of those parties is outside the best grant in the set.

GPLv3 adds a limit engineers should notice, because it bites exactly where engineers work. Essential patent claims "do not include claims that would be infringed only as a consequence of further modification of the contributor version." Modify the code far enough and you can leave the grant behind.

The license also declines to present itself as a complete answer. Section 11 closes: "Nothing in this License shall be construed as excluding or limiting any implied license or other defenses to infringement that may otherwise be available to you under applicable patent law."

Apache's grant has a tripwire, and it points at you. "If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed." If your patent strategy includes asserting against a product that embeds an Apache-licensed work, the grant you rely on ends the day you file. The parent guide covers this clause and the rest of the license mechanics in more detail.

So What Is Freedom to Operate

It is a scoped risk analysis, not a status. It asks whether specified acts, making, using, selling, offering or importing, involving a defined product in a named country, would infringe enforceable third-party claims, after accounting for whatever authority you already hold. Change the product, the country, the date or the claim set and the answer can change. It is not a property of a repository and one search does not settle it.

Answering it is a legal opinion: counsel reads a product against the claims of patents found by searching, and renders a view. That is practising law, and it is the reason this page describes what the exercise is rather than performing one. Nothing here tells you whether you have freedom to operate, because nothing here knows what you are shipping or what is in force against it.

Ask a patent attorney for this one, not just a registered practitioner. The two are not the same set: registration reaches patent agents, who are not lawyers. 37 C.F.R. 11.5(b)(1) lists what registration authorizes, and the list is preparing and prosecuting applications, advising "in contemplation of filing a patent application or other document with the Office", drafting claims and amendments and Board papers, plus services "reasonably necessary and incident to the preparation and prosecution of patent applications or other proceedings before the Office". An opinion about whether your commercial product infringes somebody else's patent is not on that list.

The reach of exposure is also wider than the party that wrote the code. The statute provides that "Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer." That is not a claim that shipping a dependency induces anything; it is a reason the question is not confined to whoever published the repository.

Two adjacent decisions are worth keeping separate from this one: what your own license choice grants away, and what a public release does to your own filing deadlines. Neither is the same question as this one.

What This Does Not Decide

It does not say whether any product has or lacks freedom to operate. That determination is specific to a product, a set of claims, and a country.
It does not recommend a license. Which grant suits you depends on facts about your own patent position that no page has.
It does not resolve implied license or exhaustion. Those doctrines are real, unsettled in places, and not covered here.
It reports no court construing any of these clauses. Licenses are contracts, and how a court would read "licensable by such Contributor" on particular facts is not on this page.
It covers four licenses and one country. Contributor license agreements, vendor terms of service, and non-US law are all separate, and 35 U.S.C. 271 is territorial by its own terms.

Educational, not legal advice, and specifically not a freedom-to-operate opinion. Reading a product against live claims is work for a registered practitioner.

Sources

35 U.S.C. 271, infringement of patent. Subsection (a) supplies "without authority"; (b) is inducement
Apache License 2.0, section 3, Grant of Patent License
GNU General Public License version 3, section 11, Patents
MIT and BSD 3-Clause, read in full and searched for the word
37 C.F.R. 11.5, which defines practice before the Office and is why this page says attorney rather than practitioner
Back to the guide: your open source license is also a patent decision

Open Source Licenses and Patent Rights A license is a patent instrument as much as a copyright one. The Apache 2.0 grant is irrevocable but narrower than most assume, MIT's silence is not the shield it looks like, and defensive termination can cost you the license to your own dependency the day you sue. Read the Guide Building in Public and Patents The modern way to build software is, by default, the fastest way to disclose an invention before anyone files on it. How a public commit, Show HN post, or open-source release starts the section 102 clock, why the US grace period is a fallback rather than a plan, and why foreign rights close immediately. Read the Guide Who Owns Your Side Project? Your employment agreement claims more than it can enforce. California, Washington, New York, and eight other states limit invention assignment clauses by statute. What decides the question is not contract language but four evidentiary gates, and your commit history is quietly answering all of them. Read the Guide