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LCA: The state of the Nouveau projectLCA: The state of the Nouveau projectPosted Jan 17, 2007 12:25 UTC (Wed) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942)In reply to: LCA: The state of the Nouveau project by johoho Parent article: LCA: The state of the Nouveau project
In ancient Rome there was a law about a buyer who bought a stolen thing. The law stated that the buyer is innocent and can keep the thing if during the purchase he made reasonable efforts to check that the thing was obtained by legal means. Effectively the original owner can only sue the seller, not its customers.
This law survived pretty much through out the history. So if Nouveau team was made enough efforts that the information they use was obtained legally and does not include in the sources a code of unknown origin to avoid copyright violation allegations, then NVidea can not sue them and should go for the Russian web site operators instead.
This is, of cause, a theory, and courts especially in US may disagree, but even in SCO vs IBM case SCO tries to bring copyright charges against IBM, not the contract breach, so they can sue later the people who used IBM's code.
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LCA: The state of the Nouveau project Posted Jan 18, 2007 2:22 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (subscriber, #24141) [Link] Nowadays the law is different: You cannot aquire property of a stolen good. It remains the property of the original owner. You are free to sue the person that sold it to you for damages, though. This is valid at least for German law.
LCA: The state of the Nouveau project Posted Jan 18, 2007 14:48 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link] Well, that rule AFAIK is applicable to contracts between business parties in most western countries. I.e. if one party while providing a service to its customers breaches the contract, then the other party can only sue the first party, not its customers.
But even with real stolen goods it would be interesting to know what police in Germany would do in the following case. Suppose a shop owner picked 20 identical TV sets, not 10 as stated in the contract, from distributor's warehouse. Then he sold all 20 TVs with normal marked prices before the theft was discovered. Will the law enforcement confiscate 10 TVs from people who bought? If so how they decide which ones?
Ownership of stolen property Posted Jan 19, 2007 17:12 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] The law of who owns something after it gets stolen and eventually passed to an innocent buyer is just a matter of policy. Neither rule is more moral than the other; it's just a question of which rule reduces theft most efficiently. So it's likely to vary a lot between jurisdictions and over time. But throughout modern times, English/American law has been that the theft victim remains the owner. There are various exceptions. One is where there is a recorded title, such as with a car or land. The TV picking case is complicated and the answer depends on the exact facts of the case. It could be that there was no theft -- the TV shop took title to all 20 TVs and thus was able to pass it on to the consumers and the distributor has only the contract dispute. This would be similar to the case where the TV shop takes only the 10 TVs agreed upon, but then doesn't pay for them. Not a theft. If the facts are such that the TVs were stolen, then the consumers do have to return them to the distributor. The police wouldn't confiscate them, because 1) it's not their job and 2) civil cases like this are normally resolved with money.
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