On 2/10/2010 10:08 AM, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
At some point, the New York bar will have no choice but to disbar the entire gang of utterly incompetent GNU arch legal beagles from SFLC for consistent filing of frivolous lawsuits such as http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit/ in which (1) "the Software Freedom Conservancy" is utterly frivolous 'plaintiff' because it doesn't own ANY busybox copyrights and (2) Erik Andersen is also utterly frivolous 'plaintiff' because he was NOT joined by Bruce Perens and other contributors to the joint work known as busybox at http://busybox.net/.
The SFLC has had successful outcomes in every single case that it has filed - all defendants have come into compliance with the GPL. No defendant has chosen to fight the plaintiffs. I understand how frustrating it must be for the GPL skeptics to see such untrammeled success, and how they must hope for some external force to appear and turn things their way. But that won't happen. You are also quite wrong about joint works in at leats four separate ways. <http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/241478.html>, According to the Copyright Act, the authors of a joint work jointly own the copyright in the work they create. A joint work is defined in Section 101 of the Copyright Act as "a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole." When the copyright in a work is jointly owned, each joint owner can use or license the work in the United States without the consent of the other owner, provided that the use does not destroy the value of the work and the parties do not have an agreement requiring the consent of each owner for use or licensing. A joint owner who licenses a work must share any royalties he or she receives with the other owners. First, BusyBox is a joint work only if all the authors have agreed to make it so. Given that one of the authors is a party to the suit and can insist that he did not intend to form such a joint work, the plaintiffs might have a difficult time showing otherwise. Second, if BusyBox is a joint work, then each author has full rights in the work and may sue for infringement without needing permission from the other authors. Third, even if BusyBox is a joint work, each contributing author has released his changes under the GPL, and therefore it may be argued that there is an agreement in place among the authors that the only way their work may be copied and distributed is by GPL. Fourth, even if BusyBox is a joint work, the plaintiffs need to demonstrate that they have permission to copy and distribute it in some way other than under the GPL, granted to them by some author of the joint work. That one author has said after the suit was filed that he does not want to be a party to it does not mean that he has granted permission to copy and distribute BusyBox outside of the GPL. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
