[cc-community] Washington Federal Court confirms that free licences are enforceable

jonathon jonathon.blake at gmail.com
Sat Aug 16 15:22:00 EDT 2008


On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 07:27, Jim Baker  wrote:

>release under GPL. If a commercial publisher picks it up, how are his rights changed under this court decision—and what actually are his rights and obligations?

In essence, this ruling afirms that the Artistic License is a license,
and not a contract. Furthermore, whilst distribution is gratis, that
does not mean that there is no economic value, and as such, both
copyright and patent laws are applicable. As such,  an entity that
violates the terms of the license can be subject to the usual and
normal legal remedies for infringement of the license.

More briefly, it means that if a commercial publisher picks up a work,
it has to adhere to _all_ of  the conditions of the license.

Aaron wrote:

>but my understanding is that this is (one of?) the first decisions to recognize the GPL as a valid license and to recognize the validity of its terms within the United States.

The court case is about _The Artistic License_, not the GNU GPL. IOW,
the license that is arguably, from a legal POV, the worst thought out
FLOSS license.

>This means that the GPL is enforceable in the US, which (I don't believe) had ever been tested in court,

There have been roughly a dozen cases involving the GNU GPL and/or the
GNU LGPL in US Courts.The majority of cases were settled out of court.

xan

jonathon


xan

jonathon


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