The Chamberlain v. Skylink DMCA ruling [LWN.net]

One of the many DMCA cases circulating in the U.S. court system is Chamberlain v. Skylink. Chamberlain manufactures garage door openers and, of course, the remote units which are used to open and close the garage door. Recent Chamberlain models use a "rolling code" system which is intended to protect homeowners against playback attacks; the code transmitted by the remote is different every time, so a thief with a recorder would capture nothing useful. This system also has the incidental result of preventing other companies from selling remotes that work with Chamberlain openers.

Except that Skylink figured out a way to get around the code, and marketed a working remote. Chamberlain then took Skylink to court, claiming that, among other things, the Skylink remote violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The problem, it seems, is that the Skylink remote circumvents the "technical measures" employed by Chamberlain to restrict access to the copyrighted software in its openers. Chamberlain was sufficiently confident of its position that it asked for a summary judgement on the DMCA argument. At the end of August, the court denied that request; the full text of the ruling is available in PDF format.

One might hope that this case would have been an opportunity for the court to take a serious look at the DMCA. The DMCA, used in this way, is an effective tool to prevent the creation of interoperable products in a wide range of industries. All that's needed is a bit of internal code and a simple "technical measure" to prevent interoperation; the DMCA does the rest. Unfortunately, the ruling in this case does little to help those who would like to see the power of the DMCA reduced.

The court denied the judgement for two reasons. The first is that, in the court's opinion, Chamberlain did not establish that the software inside its garage door opener was actually protected by copyright - a crucial precondition for DMCA applicability. This is a true technicality here; it is difficult to believe that Chamberlain will not have a copyright interest in the software it created.

The second reason is, essentially, that Chamberlain did not tell its customers that they couldn't use competing remotes.

In this case, Plaintiff sells a GDO [garage door opener] to a homeowner who then utilizes the product to access his or her own garage. As pointed out above, there are no limitations placed on the homeowner who buys the Chamberlain rolling code GDO, regarding which type of replacement or additional transmitter he or she purchases to access the GDO.

This second point may be enough to sink Chamberlain's DMCA argument, but it leaves the DMCA itself untouched. A simple statement on the box that only Chamberlain remotes may be used with the opener will close the hole in the future. This ruling is a defeat for a company attempting to wield the DMCA for its commercial benefit, but it will do nothing to stop this use of the DMCA in the future.

(Log in to post comments)

The Chamberlain v. Skylink DMCA ruling

Posted Sep 11, 2003 3:43 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

The irony is that people buy locks because they don't want to rely on the law alone. It's already illegal to trespass other people's property, but Chamberlain customers also pay for technical measure to enforce their property right.

Chamberlain, on the other hand, is selling hardware that needs to be protected by law (DMCA) to be effective. The customers are not getting what they expect to get for their money - an effective device to protect their property from trespassing by people with little or no respect to the law.

If you are going to buy anything from a company that has ever invoked DMCA, think again.

The Chamberlain v. Skylink DMCA ruling

Posted Sep 11, 2003 4:50 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Courts generally like to find the narrowest grounds possible for deciding a case: lower courts generally don't want to be making new constitutional law every day. If they can give victory to the right party on a technicality, they prefer that to declaring the DMCA unconstitutional.

So, the GDO company puts "thou shalt not use a competing GDO" on their box, and someone sues them again.

The Chamberlain v. Skylink DMCA ruling

Posted Sep 11, 2003 18:12 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

That leads to this question: Are DVDs and eBooks labeled so that their
customers know aren't allowed to use non-DVD-CCA licensed players?

The Chamberlain v. Skylink DMCA ruling

Posted Sep 12, 2003 0:21 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

That leads to this question...

No, it doesn't -- the actual ruling doesn't, anyway. I read it, and what the judge says is that various other facts of the garage door opener world may mean that Chamberlain gave every user permission to use a Skylink transmitter; absence of an explicit prohibition on using replacement transmitters was just part of the puzzle. None of those other facts have analogs in the DVD and eBook world.

It's worth noting, by the way, that this is just a rejection of summary judgement -- that means the judge did not consider all the facts. He just said that there may be facts that need to be considered.

What does this have to do with copyright protection?

Posted Sep 12, 2003 0:41 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

What really makes this an interesting DMCA case is that most people understand the DMCA to have to something to do with protecting copyrights -- stopping people from making copies and the like without the permission of the copyright owner.

Here, there's no allegation that anyone is copying the Chamberlain garage door opener software, or doing anything else to it that Chamberlain would have a right to stop under copyright law. The allegation is that a user of the Skylink transmitter is "accessing" the GDO software by causing it to open the garage door. Since when does my copyright on a program give me the right to stop you from causing a legitimate copy of it to execute?

With a codeless GDO, Chamberlain can't sue you for copyright infringement if you open somebody else's garage. So how come circumventing a device that's meant to stop people from opening other people's garages is a DMCA violation?

Oddly, though, the DMCA has been found to protect just that kind of "access." The judge in this case cites the Lexmark case where a toner cartridge manufacturer hacked the mechanism in the printer that makes it refuse to print when you use a non-Lexmark toner cartridge. By causing the printer control program to print, users of these cartridges were "accessing" the copyrighted printer control program in a way protected by DMCA.