Slashdot Mirror
German Court Says GPL is Valid
Axel Metzger writes "The Munich District Court has ruled on May 19, 2004 that the main clauses of the GNU General Public License are valid under German copyright and contract law. This seems to be the first judgment worldwide proofing the validity of the most popular free software license. The ruling is a confirmation of the preliminary injunction of April 2, 2004. The new judgment gives on 20 pages the reasons for the ruling. It states explicitly that the terms of section 2, 3 and 4 of the GPL are valid under German copyright and contract law. Here is the German text of the judgment; an English translation will be available soon. The judgment comes at the right time to fight those (SCO and others) who challenge the legal validity of the GPL in Europe and elsewhere. The lawyer of the plaintiffs, Till Jaeger from Munich should be granted the Free Software Award."
Please note that the German copyright law (Urheberrecht, as it is called) is quite different from the US copyright.
but that won't help us in the United States. Unfortunately, our government doesn't take heed from European countries anymore. Sad. We won't take counsel in our closest allies.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Rough translation pasted from my Groklaw posting,
/ralph -- that is all of the heise article!
sorry for the messed up formating:
The open source project netfilter/iptables has won a huge success in the legal
battle against the router manufacturer Sitecom: With the decision of May 19,
2004 (Az. 21 O 6123/03) the Landgericht München [something like a district
court? R.] has confirmed the temporary injuction. Acording to this the
manufacturer Sitecom is prohibited to sell its WLAN routers until further
notice. Also the comparatively high amount of the dispute of Euro 100000 was
confirmed in the decision.
In the written opinion which was published on friday, it is clearly stated that
the judge considers the GPL valid for principal reasons. It says: "The
chamber shares the opionion that the conditions of the GPL can under no
circumstances be seen as an abandonment of copyrights and legal positions linked
to copyright." The sueing developer was legitimized to demand the rights
linked to the sourcecode
This makes it finally clear that the GPL model also works according to
German law", rejoiced Lawyer Till Jaeger, who represents the
netfilter/iptables project, in an interview with heise online. After this
"probably worldwide first decision on the validity and enforcability"
it was assured that the open source community defends itself. On the other hand
the Court has made it clear, that nobody has anything to fear if he plays by the
rules of the GPL
It is unknown if the router manufacturer plans furter legal steps. Jaeger's
client in the mean time found out that Sitecom offers one additional router
model (WL-111) with a firmware that infringes the GPL. A fine of 10000 Euro
because of infringement against the temporary injunction has already been
demanded, declared Jaeger
Truly a reason to rejoice, for Jaeger and for us!
Considering that the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas sodomy law was invalid based on European court's rulings perhaps IBM can use this and that case as part of their defense.
Prosecutor: Mr. McBride, isn't it true that you have a tattoo on your chest that says "DIE, GPL DIE"?
Darl McBride: No no! That's German for "The GPL, the".
Jury mumblings: Well, no one that speaks German can be evil! NOT GUILTY!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
There is really no way for the GPL to be invalid under US copyright law, and any company to still be able to use the code. If the GPL is invalid, that means the companies lack a license to distribute the code, so it's copyright infringement, pure and simple.
That's really why it works so well. If I make a work, it is copyright to me. By default no one other than myself has any right to distribute it at all. To do so, you need a license. The GPL is that license, but has provisions. You don't have to accept it, that's fine, but then you don't have a license to distribute. In no way are your rights infringed on, or copyright cricumvented.
Same thing applies to overall vailidity. If it's not valid, as SCO would like, that's fine, but then they, and anyone else, distributing GPL code are infringing on copyright since they have no license to do so. So if it's ruled invalid, it's a loss for them, espically since I imagine many bitter OSS people would go after them for copyright infringement as retribution.
This ruling is just a formal legal statement on that fact. A court has formally analyzed the GPL and come to the quite obvious conclusion: It's a legit license that obeys both the letter and spirit of copyright law.
Supposing it does go to court, I bet the ruling is the same in the US.
Microsoft speaks against the GPL for this very reason - now the developers must reveal their source code, because it was based on GPL'ed code. But what they conveniently neglect to mention is that according to the EULA, a Windows developer cannot distribute, or even build, a derivative of Windows, under any terms . The license for GPL code covers only distribution of derivative products, whereas the MS EULA covers merely using the product. In fact, to even view the source code for an MS product requires that a developer agree to never develop a competing product!
Merely posting the source will allow these guys to continue to ship their product, but if they'd chosen the Microsoft development model, they'd owe royalties for every single product shipped!
Even though these guys might not like divulging their source code, they are still in a much better position than had they used Microsoft's code as a basis for their product.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"violators of the GPL" are actually copyright infringers and are subject to the same punishments as copyright infringers. In all copyright cases in history, the maximum punishment has been cease & desist making the illegal copies, and monetary damages.
I have never heard of a copyright infringer being forced to lose rights to other IP of their own. I very much doubt anybody will ever be forced to open source code. This would be like saying the New York Times has to give away all copies of their paper from now on because one of their columns was plagarized. Such ideas are total nonsense, but are always brought up by the enemies of the GPL.
One part of confusion is that the infringer may choose to obey the GPL in exchange for getting the lawsuit threat dropped and to be able to continue distributing their product. But they were not "forced" by the GPL to do this. In fact, legally, it does not in any way get them out of their liability for the previous copyright violations (otherwise you could violate the GPL for years and then release the source code at the end as a "get out of jail free" card).
It's quite conceivable that one judge would rule "against" one of the provisions of GPL for a very specific case, without invalidating the whole license. For instance: what if NVidia gets sued for not publishing their drivers under the GPL, and the judge does not consider their kernel module to be derived off the kernel ? Does that mean the GPL is invalid/unenforceable and NVidia used the linux kernel without a license? Hardly.
The Raven