Nasty
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| dinotrac Nov 10, 2006 2:55 AM EDT |
Things like this make me wish I had kept up with the law and the assorted administrative/pleading requirements. This is nasty stuff. I'm a little surprised, though, at the passive tone JMRI's attorney is taking, especially given that JMRI is the plaintiff For example, there is a very strong counter-argument -- one that leads into a potential Rule 11 motion. The argument -- just one nail in painting the defendant's claims as being beyond the law or a reasonable extension of it and hence a violation by the attorney of the certification he places on his pleadings -- is that copyright does not give special status to source code over binary. A binary executable is simply the compiler-translated form of the source. It is well established that freely downloadable software such as adobe's acrobat reader and flash player, Microsoft service packs, etc, retain their copyright protection. For that matter, the issue is hardly any different from restrictions placed on distribution of music or television programs broadcast over the air. Free software may grant a wider bundle of rights than those others, but it does grant a specific and limited bundle of rights, with the remainder being retained by the copyright holder. That a copyright holder retains any and all rights not specifically granted to a licensee is not controversial, and yet that is exactly what the defendant is doing. I didn't see what license the software was distributed under, but, if it were the GPL, I would also put something in about defendant having NO right to any of the software because the GPL contains an automatic termination clause on violation. I'll admit to skimming -- did I miss a federal copyright infringement complaint? The copyright act makes available something called statutory damages that the plaintiffs should be seeking. Statutory damages are a monetary award determined by the court in lieu of demonstrable monetary damages. The other thought that comes to my mind is that Federal patent law has several loser-pays provisions. I have never been a patent attorney, so I don't know what trips them, but I would certainly make sure that the elements were in my pleadings. They might already be, btw, and I simply don't know enough to recognize them. At any rate, when dealing with scumbags like these, I've always thought that you have to raise the bar. Obviously, these guys are willing to pay a certain amount to steal your property and, to the greatest extent possible, extort your money. Making that look more and more expensive seems like a good tactic. |
| jdixon Nov 10, 2006 4:24 AM EDT |
> At any rate, when dealing with scumbags like these, I've always thought that you have to raise the bar. Thugs are thugs, so raising the bar is usually a good idea in such a case, yes. |
| dinotrac Nov 10, 2006 4:35 AM EDT |
jdixon - >Thugs are thugs I'm not sure that I agree with your characterization, but that may be a matter of semantics. I believe it is possible to have a certain honor among thugs. I'm standing by scumbags. |
| dcparris Nov 10, 2006 8:58 AM EDT |
Dino, you ought to consider discussing that with the JMRI crew. Just raise your questions. It might be helpful. Bearing in mind, of course, that yanal. |
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