Should I put PATENTS file to build folder

Question

There is an editor Draft.js. It's licensed under the BSD-style License. Every file in the source code has a copyright notice. Here is a piece of that notice:

* This source code is licensed under the BSD-style license found in the
* LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree. An additional grant
* of patent rights can be found in the PATENTS file in the same directory.

So does that text says that PATENTS should be included in a build?

For example, there is a build folder:

build/
  index.html
  bundle.js
  style.css

Answer 1

In the meantime, the project has been relicensed under MIT and patent grants were removed.

The original PATENTS file is here: https://github.com/facebook/draft-js/commit/585af35c3a8c31fefb64bc884d4001faa96544d3#diff-7373d27f0ea94a5b649f893e20fffeda

Curiously, the MIT licence does not provide patent protection for contributors. So this seems to be a step backwards. It should have been relicensed under Apache, if they intended to give the same patent assurances as the original notice.

To answer the question, it is better to include the patent disclaimer, but the original BSD licence does not require this, and neither does the MIT licence. For other licences, consult their text.

For more info on software patents, see EFF and FSF.