The Long-Term Impact of Jacobsen v. Katzer

snydeq writes "Lawyer Jonathan Moskin has called into question the long-term impact last year's Java Model Railroad Interface court ruling will have on open source adoption among corporate entities. For many, the case in question, Jacobsen v. Katzer, has represented a boon for open source, laying down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers. But as Moskin sees it, the ruling 'enables a set of potentially onerous monetary remedies for failures to comply with even modest license terms, and it subjects a potentially larger community of intellectual property users to liability.' In other words, in Moskin's eyes, Jacobsen v. Katzer could make firms wary of using open source software because they fear that someone in the food chain has violated a copyright, thus exposing them to lawsuit. It should be noted that Moskin's firm has represented Microsoft in anti-trust litigation before the European Union."

Comments

Not a minor violation

[Anonymous Coward]

Katzer did considerably more than fail to comply with modest license terms. He filed a patent application for something he did not invent and claimed copyright to something he did not write. This was not a case of a minor license violation, but rather deliberate fraud. Consequently, the penalties he faced were much higher,