SFC: First Update on the Vizio lawsuit

Posted Dec 5, 2021 20:19 UTC (Sun) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
In reply to: SFC: First Update on the Vizio lawsuit by geert
Parent article: SFC: First Update on the Vizio lawsuit

Depends on whether they're on retainer or on payroll.

SFC: First Update on the Vizio lawsuit

Posted Dec 5, 2021 20:56 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

Depends whether they're honest or not :-)

A lawyer *should* provide honest advice. Managers *should* act properly on advice. Will they do what they're supposed to do, or will dishonest managers and lawyers (and judges?) collude to burn the company a la SCOG?

Retainer or payoll shouldn't matter. The danger for Vizio is that they succeed in defeating SFC in this battle, only for them to come back as a pure copyright infringement. In the UK I think that would open up management to criminal charges ...

Wouldn't it be nice if SFC demanded the company as statutory damages, then opened everything up and span it off as an employee co-operative :-) Send a warning shot over the bows of the industry as a whole ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

SFC: First Update on the Vizio lawsuit

Posted Dec 6, 2021 0:38 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (2 responses)

It seems unlikely that the court would give ownership of the company to SFC even if they were to ask for that :)

SFC: First Update on the Vizio lawsuit

Posted Dec 6, 2021 8:27 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

No not the court. But if the damages exceed the value of the company, the SFC appoint themselves receiver being the primary creditor ...

Cheers,
Wol

SFC: First Update on the Vizio lawsuit

Posted Dec 6, 2021 8:39 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

I couldn't imagine damages from a GPL violation to ever approach the value of the company violating them. Regular damages would usually be $0 (I guess except for things with a commercial proprietary relicensing business?) but then I read that statutory damages can be between $750 and $30,000 per work (per copy?) and up to $150,000 per work (per copy?) for willful infringement. OTOH, statutory damages probably don't apply here, I doubt anyone registered Linux/busybox/etc with the US copyright office?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyr...