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August 13, 2008: Court Hearing

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued its decision in our copyright appeal, and it's a ringing victory for JMRI and open-source in general.

In summary, the Court decided:

  • The Artistic License does put valid conditions on the use of licensed software.
  • Those conditions limit the copyright license, and actions outside them are infringement.
  • An injunction to stop that infringement is a suitable remedy.

Specifically, the Court wrote:

It is outside the scope of the Artistic License to modify and distribute the copyrighted materials without copyright notices and a tracking of modifications from the original computer files. If a downloader does not assent to these conditions stated in the COPYING file, he is instructed to "make other arrangements with the Copyright Holder." Katzer/Kamind did not make any such "other arrangements." The clear language of the Artistic License creates conditions to protect the economic rights at issue in the granting of a public license. These conditions govern the rights to modify and distribute the computer programs and files included in the downloadable software package. The attribution and modification transparency requirements directly serve to drive traffic to the open source incubation page and to inform downstream users of the project, which is a significant economic goal of the copyright holder that the law will enforce. Through this controlled spread of information, the copyright holder gains creative collaborators to the open source project; by requiring that changes made by downstream users be visible to the copyright holder and others, the copyright holder learns about the uses for his software and gains others' knowledge that can be used to advance future software releases.

The Appeals Court ruled that the lower court's decision is "vacated and remanded". This returns the case to the District Court for Northern California, which must decide on a remaining question before issuing the injunction.

Although there will be some further proceedings, this is a huge step forward for us. The appellate judges have ruled that when Kater took JMRI files, modified them, and distributed them as if there were his own, he was violating copyright law and we can hold him accountable.

It's also an important result for open-source software in general, because (to quote Larry Lessig's blog):

In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.

Important clarity and certainty by a critically important US Court.

There's been a lot of public reaction to this ruling. Our "Articles by Others" page carries links to some of the commentary.

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