Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions are Enforceable as Copyright Condition (New Media and Technology)

Posted Aug 13, 2008 19:41 UTC (Wed) by spot (guest, #15640)
Parent article: Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions are Enforceable as Copyright Condition (New Media and Technology)

This is really good news for open source licensing, but unfortunately, it doesn't make
Artistic 1.0 a good license to use. I wish this ruling had come on a Free (as in FSF) license,
but I suspect that such a license wouldn't have caused the strange interpretation from the
original ruling.

Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions are Enforceable as Copyright Condition (New Media and Technology)

Posted Aug 13, 2008 21:23 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (3 responses)

That doesn't actually matter much; it's really about the form of the license, which is shared
by all free software licenses ("You may (do these things), provided that you (also do other
things).") The GPL, in particular, uses the same "provided that" term that the decision
depends on.

Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions are Enforceable as Copyright Condition (New Media and Technology)

Posted Aug 13, 2008 23:54 UTC (Wed) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link] (2 responses)

Indeed.  That reasoning should have fairly broad applicability, not least because this ruling
comes from a three-judge panel at the  the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in
Washington (one rung below the US Supreme Court).  

The panel remanded the case back to the Circuit Court in San Francisco for further trial of
Jacobsen's claims for equitable relief (an injunction), which he'll very likely now get.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

Infringement and the US Customs Service

Posted Aug 14, 2008 17:21 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (1 responses)

Now that a court has ruled that copying without license compliance is infringement, copyleft developers will be able to use the US Customs Service to seize infringing embedded devices at the port of entry. There's an incentive to come into compliance for you.

Infringement and the US Customs Service

Posted Aug 14, 2008 18:07 UTC (Thu) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

(/me is awestruck at dmarti's bureaucracy-hacking skilz.)

Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions are Enforceable as Copyright Condition (New Media and Technology)

Posted Aug 16, 2008 0:04 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

This is really good news for open source licensing,

Is it? The decisions was whether the terms in question are license conditions or contract covenants. Each has its own power.

If they were contract covenants, for example, the GPL author could actually do what the uninformed keep saying they're afraid of: force a publisher who incorporates the code into his object-code product to disclose his source code. (Whereas as license conditions, the most he can get is royalties for the code the publisher copied).

Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions are Enforceable as Copyright Condition (New Media and Technology)

Posted Aug 17, 2008 0:38 UTC (Sun) by ejhuff (guest, #3150) [Link]

Whereas as license conditions, the most he can get is royalties for the code the publisher copied

No, he can get an injunction, preventing the publisher from distributing the code.