Apple Inc. failed to fully revive a long-running copyright lawsuit against cybersecurity firm Corellium Inc. over its software that simulates the iPhone’s iOS operating systems, letting security researchers identify flaws in the software.
The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Monday ruled that Corellium’s CORSEC simulator is protected by copyright law’s fair use doctrine, which allows the duplication of copyrighted work under certain circumstances.
CORSEC “furthers scientific progress by allowing security research into important operating systems,” a three-judge panel for the appeals court said, adding that iOS “is functional operating software that falls outside copyright’s core.”
Good.
I don’t recall this case well, did Corellium repurpose legitimate IOS licenses or were they flat out creating copies from thin air? I agree that Corellium should be allowed to offer their service for research even without permission, however I hope they’re not flat out spinning up VMs without backing licenses.
I’m really shocked by this. Operating system software falls outside of copyright’s core??!? What is this supposed to mean and what’s the justification? Am I the only one who finds this really odd?
https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/files/202112835.pdf
This is the first time I hear anything about affording functional software less copyright protection. Literally all software executables are comprised of “functional elements”. I don’t know if this case could be precedent setting, but it seems like this could have ramifications for not only other operating systems but the software industry at large.
Presumably, the court means OSes can’t be locked to hardware. Apple has a provision in the EULA which states Apple operating systems can only be virtualized on Apple hardware.
VMware hypervisor could virtualize x86 macOS guests, but only officially on Apple hardware.
The courts seem to be saying virtualization gets a free pass. There is a separation between the hardware and the OS, and running an OS on virtual hardware is a perfectly fine. The OS is not being modified, so copyrights aren’t being violated.
This is big for the emulation community. The Playstation emulators, Nintendo emulators, etc. should be in the clear if this stands.
Flatland_Spider,
It’s not at all clear to me that’s what they meant and I feel their wording was terrible. But anyway I do agree the transposition of a legitimate license is reasonable and ought to be permissible under copyright law. Not just here, but also in the case of windows licenses that customers are denied the right to reuse or resell by microsoft.
Well, funnily enough the ruling explicitly acknowledges that iOS is modified to add features needed by Corellium.
The DMCA has some exceptions for research and compatibility, and I’m not sure if anyone’s ever tried to apply those to emulators. But when it comes to fair use it’s determined on a case by case basis. If you & I wanted did the same thing say with windows, playstation, xbox, nintendo, etc, in all likelihood as individuals we would fly under the radar. But if we were to create a service that parallels what Corellium does, then theoretically we could end up in front of a court that rules differently to find the us infringing. Bear in mind that one of the arguments made in this ruling was that Corellium’s market didn’t particularly overlap with apple’s. So even the same judge might construe the fair use rights for a game console emulator differently. Obviously I cannot say for sure and I am just speculating.
IANAL…
Legally speaking, there’s a well-held assumption that “clean room engineering” is perfectly legal. That is, if you do not use any copyrightable or patent-infringing code or hardware implementations in developing your product, there is nothing illegal in making compatible products to compete with another company.
This was very well established with the implementations of the IBM PC BIOS by “clone” manufacturers. Open Source OSes also get a pass because of this as well. There’s nothing illegal about Haiku, ReactOS, or the countless UNIXes, because they aim to provide a completely unique but compatible implementation of another product.
Emulators can, and do, slip into this as well. There’s nothing illegal about writing a clean-room Nintendo 64 emulator, as long as it doesn’t reuse any copyrighted or patented hardware or software. What is illegal, is redistributing copyrighted ROMs with said software. As long as said N64 emulator featured no Nintendo code inside of it, there’s nothing illegal about bundling correctly licensed games or homebrew, and Nintendo have no legal basis to prevent distribution.
So, back on topic…. As long as CORSEC are completely in the clear about the provenance of their code bundled with the emulator, and no features are covered by Apple patents, legally speaking, Apple have no legal basis to stop this iOS emulator from being distributed. Of course, that includes software tied to the hardware, like boot ROMs and firmware, but if these can be obtained by the user from alternative sources (and are very much NOT bundled with the emulator), fundamentally the legal liability falls on the user.
In the same way that Microsoft can’t sue ASUS for an end consumer installing pirated Windows on their ASUS machine, Apple can’t sue CORSEC because their users have downloaded and installed iOS on their emulator. As long as no copyrighted code is being distributed by the emulator providers, technically they can’t be successfully sued.