An injunction against Fortinet for GPL violations

Posted Apr 14, 2005 20:13 UTC (Thu) by nedrichards (subscriber, #23295) [Link]

>Hopefully, Fortinet's own copyright violations will render that path >untenable. But in the US court system, you can never rely on the >intelligence of judges.

Good thing the action is taking place in the Munich district court then.

Posted Apr 15, 2005 6:47 UTC (Fri) by freddyh (guest, #21133) [Link]

I'm probably being irrationally paranoid, but this smells like a case where the DMCA could easily be abused. If Fortinet claims that their encryption is an anti-piracy measure, whoever cracked it could be facing some serious shit.

Luckily, under German law you *are* allowed to do reverse engineering if the thing you are reverse engineering includes your own work. I would guess this clause is available in other jurisdictions as well, although I am not sure. I would also guess that in the US you're simply not at all allowed to do this.

Obviously this is still a problem because you don't know yet if it's your work until you've reverse engineered it... So, if you finally conclude that the product doesn't include your work then there is no law-suit, and the company doesn't have to know you've reverse engineered in the first place ;)

Posted Apr 15, 2005 13:15 UTC (Fri) by ernest (subscriber, #2355) [Link]

As far as I understand it, the DMCA would not even help in this case, even in the Wild West (ie the US). Apparently there is something about being a thief that juges dislike.

Posted Apr 15, 2005 13:58 UTC (Fri) by bbigby (guest, #29308) [Link]

I don't think that the DMCA will protect Fortinet under these circumstances. The problem for Fortinet is that the DMCA is for protecting copyright material of the rightful owner. In this case, Fortinet is NOT the owner of the GPL'ed software. Clearly, they are violating copyright law AND the DMCA does not apply in this case.

Even if you say, "Ah, but the DMCA protects the part of Fortinet's product that is theirs." Perhaps, but there is something in law, called "unclean hands." You cannot receive compensation for a loss when you have acquired gains from breaking the law. Besides, gpl-violations.org did not circumvent the protections in order to use the software. They did it to reveal GPL violations. I think that matters in the law. If gpl-violations.org had not found any violations, they would have quietly discarded the information that they acquired. None would be the wiser.