No common law in Germany...

Posted Mar 7, 2015 17:46 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
In reply to: A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware by smurf
Parent article: A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware

For those curious (and going off on a tangent), this link has a good primer on the contrasts between a civil law and common law legal system. All countries currently or formerly part of the British Commonwealth and colonies (including the USA) have a common law legal system¹. Most other countries have a civil law system evolved from Roman Law (including Germany and the rest of continental Europe). Here's another good link (even if it has an untrusted security certificate).

I can think of one or two which could easily triple the time required for the trial...

You mean VMWare could drag this thing on for years like SCO? Just curious, how? And, ewww... :-\

¹ Except the U.S. state of Louisiana. Its civil law system was inherited from the days of Spanish and French territorial possession.

No common law in Germany...

Posted Mar 8, 2015 23:00 UTC (Sun) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

Nice links, thanks.

Especially interesting to note is the much lower importance of precedence in civil law systems. In other words, another judge could decide to rule differently on a later, similar case. Even more so if he or she isn't German: while most of Europe seems to have civil law systems, the laws themselves can be completely different from one country to another. The European Union is working on that... at a snail, legal pace.

Things we will become *very* interesting for sure and some precedence will be set - however this suit shouldn't produce a "landmark decision" to the same extend it would in a common law system.

By the way: because of the massive US influence on Western culture, many Europeans have misconceptions about their own justice and even police systems. In plainer words, as a European the more entertaining US drama you watch and the less boring and depressing local newspapers you read, the more confused you are about your own systems (I plead guilty!). The most ironic is when even local fictions trying to compete with the US ones for TV market share stage supposedly local judges and policemen "accidentally" following some US-based rules. Think of the last time you had a laugh seeing a computer screen in a movie and you can probably imagine what European lawyers can sometimes feel when they watch TV.

No common law in Germany...

Posted Mar 9, 2015 14:02 UTC (Mon) by hugoroy (guest, #60577) [Link]

Copyright, especially for the legal protection of computer programs, is harmonized at the EU level (directive 2009/24) so yes, actually, we can expect some landmark decisions out of this case. For instance, if some part of the EU directive is considered not clear by the court, they can send a question to the European Union Cour of Justice. Their potential answers would have direct effect everywhere in the EU.