Court Bolsters Enforcement of Open Source Licenses
Aug 14, 2008
Supporters of free/open source licenses like the GNU General Public License and Creative Commons are celebrating yesterday's decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled violating such public licenses can be considered copyright infringement.
The case involved commercial software developers who had allegedly used code that was made available with the open source Artistic License without meeting the terms of the original license. The defendents had successfully argued in District Court that the license requirements that stated they needed to credit the program's developer and document any modifications were a matter of contract, not copyright, law.
However, the Court of Appeals overturned the District Court decision and, in doing so, stiffened the penalties for violating the terms of public licenses.
Stanford Law professor Larry Lessig, a founding board member of Creative Commons, described the ruling as a "very important victory" and said it offered "important clarity and certainty by a critically important U.S. Court." Stanford's Center for Internet and Society also played a key role in the case by preparing an amicus brief.
For more background, you can download a PDF of the Court's opinion.
Tags:
copyright, Creative Commons, GPL, Larry Lessig, open source, Stanford
