Legal Archive

Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. The defeated software giant announced it would not appeal against a decisive European Union court ruling two months ago that backed the Commission.

A group of state attorneys general urged a federal judge on Tuesday to hold Microsoft to a 2002 antitrust settlement another five years so that the company can't stymie embryonic Web 2.0 rivals of its Windows operating system. According to six states - California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts - and the District of Columbia, Microsoft could use its Internet Explorer browser as a 'chokepoint' to block moves that might unseat Windows dominant position on the desktop.

Groklaw reports that a company called IP Innovation, LLC, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Novell and Red Hat. Groklaw goes into black helicopter mode, trying to find a tie between this IP Innovation thing and Microsoft - and it finds it too. A few ex-Microsoft employees now work at IP Innovation. Do with it as you please.

Monsoon Multimedia, which was subjected to the first US lawsuit on non-compliance with the GPL, has published a press release in which they agree to make any modifications public and thereby complying to the requirements stipulated in the GPL license. "Monsoon Multimedia today announced efforts to fully comply with the GPL. Monsoon is in settlement negotiations with BusyBox to resolve the matter and intends to fully comply with all open-source software license requirements. Monsoon will make modified BusyBox source code publicly available on the company web-site in the coming weeks."

Microsoft suffered a stunning defeat on Monday when a European Union court backed a European Commission ruling that the US software giant illegally abused its market power to crush competitors. The European Union's second-highest court dismissed the company's appeal on all substantive points of the 2004 antitrustruling. The court said Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, was unjustified in tying new applications to its Windows operating system in a way that harmed consumer choice. The verdict, which may be appealed only on points of law and not of fact, could force Microsoft to change its business practices.

"Reyk and I have decided to show something from the private handling of this Atheros copyright violation issue," OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt began in a posting to the OpenBSD -misc mailing list referring to the recent relicensing of OpenBSD's BSD licensed Atheros driver under the GPL. He noted, "it has been like pulling teeth since (most) Linux wireless guys and the SFLC do not wish to admit fault. I think that the Linux wireless guys should really think hard about this problem, how they look, and the legal risks they place upon the future of their source code bodies." He stressed that the theory that BSD code can simply be relicensed to the GPL without making significant changes to the code is false, adding, "in their zeal to get the code under their own license, some of these Linux wireless developers have broken copryright law repeatedly. But to even get to the point where they broke copyright law, they had to bypass a whole series of ethical considerations too."

Discussion continues on the Linux Kernel mailing list about the legality and morality of re-licensing BSD/GPL dual-licensed code under only the GPL. Alan Cox replied to Theo de Raadt's comments suggesting he was encouraging people to break the law, "re-read my email and then apologize. I do question the .h files where they are BSD licence and no changes were made to the work. I also point out that the dual licence on that code appears to give permission to distribute under one of those licences by choice." In response to Theo's request that code be shared both ways rather than converted to a sole GPL, "that's about the first thing I would agree on - its somewhat rude and not something I personally would usually choose to do."

OpenBSD project creator Theo de Raadt detailed his concerns regarding BSD-licensed code and Dual-BSD/GPL-licensed code being re-licensed under only the GPL (as previously discussed): "Honestly, I was greatly troubled by the situation, because even people like Alan Cox were giving other Linux developers advice to... Break the law. And furthermore, there are even greater potential risks for how the various communities interact." Regarding the concern that the BSD license allows companies to steal code, Theo reflected: "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope - the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out."

"Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most: he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights. The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses", GrokLaw writes.

"We can read the Linspire-Microsoft patent agreement now, or more precisely Microsoft's 'Covenant to Customers', and I thought it would be worthwhile to give it a close, line-by-line reading. I'll explain it as best I can, but ask your lawyer if it matters to you in a real-world sense. For our purposes here, let's just have fun with the worst deal I've seen yet in this category."

SWSoft, the company behind Parallels Desktop for Mac, is possibly violating the LGPL license by using LGPL libraries from the WINE project without providing access to the source code. The WINE project first discovered the violation early this June, and after several failed attempts at getting the source code to the libraries, they set up a wiki page to keep track of the ongoing violation. The WINE project wants to resolve the issue "without starting legal action". Thanks to MacWereld for pointing this out .

Google lost its recent antitrust battle with Microsoft on Tuesday when a US District Court judge overseeing latter company's antitrust settlement declined to accept Internet search giant's request to extend the US government oversight of Microsoft's antitrust efforts. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who was scheduled to review the report in a hearing on June 26, in her ruling, refused to consider Google's petition to have the agreement extended beyond November, when major parts of it expire.

"What's the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers' letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program? Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond's software better. As a hobby, Cansdale developed an add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio. TestDriven.NET allows unit test suites to be run directly from within the Microsoft IDE. Cansdale gave away this gadget on his website, and initially received the praises of Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft was so pleased with him, it gave him a Most Valuable Professionals award, which it says it gives to 'exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise with others'. However, his cherished status did not last."

The European Union's second highest court is expected to rule on Sept. 17 whether the European Commission was right in 2004 to find that Microsoft violated antitrust laws, sources familiar with the matter said. Sept. 17 is the final working day before the retirement of Court of First Instance President Bo Vesterdorf, who is presiding over the landmark case. The ruling is expected to clarify whether the European Commission can continue to pursue the case, or whether it must pull back and permit Microsoft to continue its business practices.