Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL?

Posted Jan 12, 2026 15:27 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL? by SLi
Parent article: SFC v. VIZIO: who can enforce the GPL?

> said in public that only the copyright owner can sue to redress GPL noncompliance

This seems to be a question of *law*, not the FSF's opinion of what they think the law should be. But regardless of their opinions, the legal landscape has changed considerably since the GPLv2 was written -- most prominent change being legally-enforced DRM that renders quite a bit of the GPL's "intent" effectively worthless.

Is the contract restricted to the buyers, or to the "any 3rd party" of the GPL?

Posted Jan 12, 2026 18:39 UTC (Mon) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link]

> > said in public that only the copyright owner can sue to redress GPL noncompliance
> This seems to be a question of *law*, not the FSF's opinion of what they think the law should be. But regardless of their opinions, the legal landscape has changed considerably since the GPLv2 was written -- most prominent change being legally-enforced DRM that renders quite a bit of the GPL's "intent" effectively worthless.

It's not, really. A contract *can* usually deliberately create a right for a third party beneficiary to sue. Thus, the question here is whether GPL does, which goes to the intent of the parties. Intent of the parties can be a question of the law if the text is clear enough, but California allows evidence even against what seems like a clear meaning of a text.

I think you need to look at the intent in a more limited sense. It's not about "what we want to ultimately accomplish". The intent as relevant here, is much more mechanical: Did the parties intend to agree to grant third party beneficiaries the right to sue for specific performance. The "what we want to accomplish" part is relevant to answering that question, but the court ultimately wants to answer how the parties at the time would have answered that very specific question.

Now, there is, or rather was, an argument to be made that, in this specific case, this is something that could not be agreed at all. Vizio tried it and lost.

The SFC carefully styled the claim as a state contract law claim, not a Copyright Law claim. Copyright is exclusively federal; states cannot really add to it or remove from it. Vizio removed the case to a Federal Court, arguing that the claims are fully preempted by the Copyright Act. Essentially, "what is demanded here is sufficiently copyright-like that the states are preempted from doing that".

And that was a good try. The federal judge looked at the case and said that this demand for producing source code is different enough from the normal exclusive rights of the copyright owner that it can properly be analyzed under contract law. Remanded to state court.

Had Vizio won that claim—and I think it plausibly could have—the case would have been over. It would have been moved to the federal court. Then the judge would ask SFC "are you the copyright owner?". "No" -> Ok, you have no standing to sue; only the copyright owner has standing to sue under the Copyright Act.