In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rahul Dhesi) wrote: > The SFLC says it differently. Their GPL enforcement always seeks some > sort of penalty for the offender that goes far beyond simply making GPL > sources available. Otherwise future defendants would have no incentive > to not violate the GPL in the first place.
Note that if the settlement is secret, it doesn't provide very much incentive. So, it seems unlikely that the SFLC would want to keep settlements secret. How about the defendants? Haven't many of them been public companies? A large settlement would show up in their public financial records, so isn't going to stay secret for long. Thus, I doubt they are going to worry too much about keeping it secret from the start. Thus, I suspect that the settlements are for little or no cash. Plaintiff may talk about large potential damages (statutory damages for bad faith infringement could get rather staggering rather fast...) to make the defendant come to their senses, but I don't think anyone would agree to that in settlement. (I'm assuming statutory damages would be available, because I'm assuming the copyrights have been registered. I can't find that registration, but I don't claim to be a good copyright registration searcher. I assume they have been registered, because if not, every defendant so far would have filed an answer to the complaint pointing that out, and the court would have immediately dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The first time, the court would have been amused at the plaintiff overlooking such a basic thing. But aren't they filling subsequent suits in the same court? The court is not going to be amused the second time the same plaintiff brings forth essentially the same case with the same flaw. We'd be seeing sanctions by now, probably. Thus, I infer that the copyrights must be registered). -- --Tim Smith _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
