Damages
Posted Dec 4, 2003 4:20 UTC (Thu) by
andrel (subscriber, #5166)
Parent article:
The GPL Is a License, not a Contract
Prof. Moglen says:
A defendant found to have wrongfully included GPL'd code in its own proprietary work can be mulcted in damages for the distribution that has already occurred, and prevented from distributing its product further.
Why can't the judge decide forfeiture of the proprietary source code is the appropriate penalty? There are many programmers who would prefer this to a cash payment as compensation for the illegal use of their code. Their layers will certainly suggest to the court that releasing the infringing code under the GPL is an acceptable remedy.
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