Court Ruling Upholds Open-Source Copyrights
Date : 14 Aug 2008 Category : Technology
NewsFactor NetworkThe bottom line? Even if open-source or Creative Commons licensing agreements charge no cash, if you violate terms of the license you are infringing on copyrighted material.
The Case
The plaintiff in the case, Robert Jacobsen, developed code for interfacing and programming model railroad trains by remote control through a group called the Java Model Railroad Initiative (JMRI). The group posted the software under an open-source licensing agreement online at SourceForge. Matthew Katzer of KAM Industries took that code and developed a commercial product called Decoder Commander.
But it seems Katzer did not follow provisions in the license that included attribution of the source code or posting of modifications, among other violations. In the original Northern California ruling before Judge Jeffrey White, Katzer was absolved of copyright infringement because the judge deemed the open-source license too broad. The appeals court thought otherwise.
Many analysts consider this successful appeal to be an important milestone in the protection of open-source and Creative Commons agreements.
The Verdict
The appeals court found in favor of Jacobsen and listed five reasons why his open-source Artistic License was violated in the case of KAM Industries. District Judge Hochberg wrote in the decision: "Specifically, the Decoder Commander software did not include (1) the authors' names, (2) JMRI copyright notices, (3) references to the COPYING file, (4) an identification of SourceForge or JMRI as the original source of the definition files, and (5)...