Linked by Amjith Ramanujam on Thu 14th Aug 2008 19:00 UTC, submitted by Moulinneuf
A federal appeals court has overruled a lower court ruling that, if sustained, would have severely hampered the enforceability of free software licenses. The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement. The difference matters because copyright law affords much stronger remedies against infringement than does contract law. If allowed to stand, the decision could have neutered popular copyleft licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The district court decision was overturned on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
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Member since:
2005-11-02
It revolves around the interpretation of the clauses of the license as clauses of a contract instead of conditions of a copyright notice. This can be a subtle difference, but in this case it was not: the artistic license clearly states that the conditions are copyright conditions.
I believe this was probably a case of a good lawyer on the part of the defendant being effective in his arguments. Fortunately the next judge to get it was more careful, so no harm done.