Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

Posted Jan 31, 2012 23:59 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
In reply to: Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement by zyga
Parent article: Garrett: The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

If company B sells a library for 0.01$ per unit and company A incorporates that in their next product that sells by the million they don't have to worry about people suing them for whatever B did. They have a contract, a library and some header files.

Actually, this is not the case. Users of infringing software (both patents and copyright) can be sued for the infringement even if they didn't create it. This is not unusual for big-ticket commercial software. They may have indemnification as part of their contract. But in general an indemnification term from a small company is tantamount to a promise to go bankrupt upon lawsuit.