The GPL Is a License, not a Contract [LWN.net]

The GPL Is a License, not a Contract

Posted Dec 4, 2003 7:08 UTC (Thu) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698)
In reply to: The GPL Is a License, not a Contract by torsten
Parent article: The GPL Is a License, not a Contract

But the question is, do I need to demonstrate financial damage, or is simple infringement enough to collect?

There are two kinds of damages that a court may order in a copyright case:

statutory damages - the damages provided by copyright law
actual damages - how much damage you can demonstrate to the court was caused by the defendant

For information on remedies for infringement, see 17 U.S.C. 504.

The plaintiff may choose whether to request actual damages or statutory damages. The amount of statutory damages awarded are left to the discretion of the court, and range from $750 to $30,000 per infringement (i.e., per copy distributed in violation of the license), or up to $150,000 if the court finds that the infringement was willful.

In the past, in order to be eligible to be awarded statutory damages for copyright infringement of a work, it was necessary for the copyright on the work to have been registered either prior to the infringement, or within the three month grace period following first publication. It appears that this requirement may have been lifted.

In addition, the court may allow recovery of attorney's fees.

Note that if even if you choose not to register a copyright, you are still required by 17 U.S.C. 407 to deposit two copies of the work with the Library of Congress. If you fail to do this, the Register of Copyrights can issue a written demand for the deposit, and can impose fines if the demand is not met within three months.

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The GPL Is a License, not a Contract

Posted Nov 1, 2005 20:14 UTC (Tue) by pjgust (guest, #33537) [Link]

A couple of related question about copyright and GPL. Both are related to whether the ability for an author to offer software under GPL depends on having a valid/active copyright.

Question 1: What happens to the ability of the owner to continue licensing code under GPL once the copyright for the software expires? Can the author continue to require new licensees to adhere to the terms of the GPL anyway? What about existing licensees; are they now free of its provisions or must they continue to operate under the license?

Question 2: 17 USC 411 says that, "no action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title". 17 USC 412 goes on to say that, "no award of statutory damages or of attorney's fees, as provided by sections 504 and 505, shall be made for ... any infringement of copyright commenced after first publication of the work and before the effective date of its registration, unless such registration is made within three months after the first publication of the work."

I'm willing to bet that most if not all source code licensed inder GPL has not been registered and no fees have been paid. How does this impact the validity and/or enforcability of the GPL for such code? Does the GPL depend on its enforcibility under copyright law? Or is it the case that the licensor can still seek injunctive relief for a violation of the license, independent of the enforcibility of the underlying copyright. If not, it's bad news for most if not all GPL licensors. If so it seems that GPL must be based on something beyond copyright law.