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You, go, Jon!You, go, Jon!Posted Mar 21, 2011 18:33 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312)In reply to: You, go, Jon! by wahern Parent article: Has Bionic stepped over the GPL line? What precedent? I'm not aware of any precedent. (If you know of legal precedent, I would like to know about it. IANAL, but I intend to play one someday.) Try Baystate v. Bentley Systems (1996), which held that technical interfaces are not copyrightable, including structure layouts and element names. See here (pdf). It is hard to see what could be left in a stripped interface header file, other than complex macros or inline functions, which presumably have much stronger protection.
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You, go, Jon! Posted Mar 24, 2011 6:49 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]
That's useful, but I cannot find any record that this decision was appealed.
This is important because the holdings in the case were by a federal *district* court. If it had been appealed, it would have gone to a federal appellate court--the holdings of appellate courts are binding upon that court's jurisdiction (the district, the circuit, or the entire U.S. depending on the appellate court level).
District Court opinions do not constitute precedent in the United States. Any court anywhere in the U.S., including that *same* district court, is at liberty to completely disregard the findings and results in this case (unless they have a local rule to the contrary, which might be the case).
You, go, Jon! Posted Mar 24, 2011 16:24 UTC (Thu) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link] District court decisions do not count as binding precedent, certainly. That doesn't mean they aren't widely influential, in terms of logic and reasoning. The idea is to interpret the law, not make it up, right?If the district court's ruling is a tour de force of rationality, any other court is going to have a difficult time issuing a contrary one. This particular decision treated the issues here in greater depth than any previous U.S. court, and should reasonably be treated as a guide to the way other courts would rule when faced with the same question.
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