diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
index da13102eda..9291bc9209 100755
--- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -365,6 +365,18 @@ our @typeList = (
 	qr{guintptr},
 );
 
+# Match text found in common license boilerplate comments:
+# for new files the SPDX-License-Identifier line is sufficient.
+our @LICENSE_BOILERPLATE = (
+	"licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL",
+	"under the terms of the GNU General Public License",
+	"under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public",
+	"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge",
+	"GNU GPL, version 2 or later",
+	"See the COPYING file"
+);
+our $LICENSE_BOILERPLATE_RE = join("|", @LICENSE_BOILERPLATE);
+
 # Load common spelling mistakes and build regular expression list.
 my $misspellings;
 my %spelling_fix;
@@ -1497,6 +1509,13 @@ sub process_end_of_file {
 			     "' need 'SPDX-License-Identifier'?");
 		}
 	}
+	if ($fileinfo->{action} eq "new" &&
+	    exists $fileinfo->{facts}->{sawboilerplate}) {
+		ERROR("New file '" . $fileinfo->{filenew} . "' must " .
+		      "not have license boilerplate header text, only " .
+		      "the SPDX-License-Identifier, unless this file was " .
+		      "copied from existing code already having such text.");
+	}
 }
 
 sub process {
@@ -1799,6 +1818,10 @@ sub process {
 			&checkspdx($realfile, $1);
 		}
 
+		if ($rawline =~ /$LICENSE_BOILERPLATE_RE/) {
+			$fileinfo->{facts}->{sawboilerplate} = 1;
+		}
+
 		if ($rawline =~ m,(SPDX-[a-zA-Z0-9-_]+):,) {
 			my $tag = $1;
 			my @permitted = qw(