Legal Archive

Gutsy/foolhardy Mac clone maker Psystar responded in August to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit with an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple. Earlier this week, Apple's lawyers filed a motion to have the suit dismissed, calling it "deeply flawed." In its statement, Apple contends: "One of the bedrock principles of antitrust law is that a manufacturer's unilateral decision concerning how to distribute its product and with whom it will deal cannot violate the Sherman Act."

Compulsory Windows purchasing by way of PC bundles is one of the biggest hurtles to alternative OS adoption. Some people have been able to fight it: "Reading the Slashdot article about Dave Mitchell from Great Britain, who got a 47 pounds refund from Dell for returning his copy of Windows was an inspiration for me to check, if it is possible in Poland, too. This is my success story."

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.

There are probably lots and lots of lawsuits going on every day in the technology world, and generally, they are quite uninteresting to all of us. Exceptions exist, of course, and the case of Apple and PsyStar is definitely one of them. It's a lawsuit that could test one of the most debated issues in the world of software: the EULA issue. To refresh your memory: PsyStar started offering Macintosh clones earlier this year, which caused quite the uproar in the Mac community. Apple was silent on the issue at first, but a few weeks ago the company decided to take legal action against PsyStar, claiming PsyStar violated Apple's copyright and license agreements (EULAs), and motivated others to do the same. While several legal experts agree that Apple's EULA will stand the test of court in The Netherlands, the situation in the US might be completely different. PsyStar seems prepared for the worst, as they have hired lawyers from Carr & Ferrell LLP, a firm who successfully fought Apple in court over IP issues before. I'm breaking out the popcorn, because this is hopefully going to be a big one.

The convoluted case of SCO v. Novell dealt a heady blow to the SCO Group Wednesday, with United States District Judge Dale Kimball ordering the company to pay $2.5 million to Novell for improperly claiming, and collecting royalties for, the Unix operating system.

Apple has filed a suit (more details) on July 3rd against Psystar in the northern district of California. Psystar dubbed its cheap Mac Clone as Open Computer and started shipping them around April of this year.

The way the Internet is set up now, an I.P. address, by itself, doesn't identify an individual user. But an I.P. address can be traced to a specific Internet service provider, and with a subpoena, the Internet provider can be forced to identify which of their customers was assigned a particular I.P. address at a particular time. That is how the recording industry has been identifying and suing people who use file sharing programs.

Cisco is not taking enough action to stamp out the sale of counterfeit products on Internet auction sites, according to networking-product resellers. Mike Sheldon, chief executive of reseller Network Hardware Resale, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that Cisco was not willing to co-operate with resellers to investigate potentially counterfeit Cisco products being sold on auction sites such as eBay.

In July of 2007, Skype lost a court case over their failure to include a copy of the GPL in their WSKP100 VoIP phone - it ran Linux, GPL software, which means a copy of the GPL license must be included. The case was started by the gpl-violations.org group. Skype decided to appeal against the decision, but it has decided to withdraw that appeal.

Speaking of soap operas, there's one soap opera in the technology world that has been going on for so long that nobody really seems to know why it was ever started, whatever all the different moves have been over the years, or whoever lost or won which battle. Just like a true soap opera, you can just jump right in the middle of it and feel like you've always been part of the regular audience. The SCO saga is such a case.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that hundreds of thousands of IIS webservers were hacked. Code was placed on them that installed malware on visitors' computers. Among the infectees were websites from the UK government and the United Nations. Initial reports said the attackers used a security vulnerability in Microsoft's IIS, but the company published more information on the attacks today, and denies IIS was compromised.

When PsyStar announced they would be offering their own Macintosch clone, pre-installed with Apple's Mac OS X Leopard, they opened up a whole can of worms. Despite the fact that the company itself was shrouded in mystery and dubiousness, the possible implications of their actions sparkled an interesting debate here on OSNews as well as other discussion venues: can PsyStar and its users just discard Apple's End User License Agreement for Leopard? Instead of relying on my own limited layman's understanding of Dutch Common Law, I decided to contact Dutch legal experts, and ask for their opinions on Apple's EULA, and EULAs in general.

The license behind Linux and other open source projects has never faced a determined legal attack, and although it purports to give real teeth to developers' wishes, there's been fear that a committed enemy may one day attempt to challenge its legal footing. Recently, the Software Freedom Law Center sued Verizon for copyright infringement related to a GPL violation. This week, Verizon opted to settle out of court. This victory gives the GPL some needed legal momentum that may fend off future challenges.

Microsoft Corp. on Friday asked that a lawsuit claiming it duped consumers in a Windows Vista marketing program be suspended while the company appeals a judge's decision to grant the case class-action status. If granted, the motion would also postpone any new disclosures of potentially embarrassing company e-mails. Last month, the release of similar documents showed that top-level company executives struggled with the new operating system on machines labeled "Vista Capable," and that partners such as Dell Inc. warned Microsoft that the campaign would confuse consumers.