[Sussex] SFLC Files First Ever U.S. GPL Violation Lawsuit

[Paul Tansom]

** Andrew Guard <andrew07 at andrewguard.com> [2007-09-21 00:07]:
> http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2007/sep/20/busybox/
** end quote [Andrew Guard]

Hmm, interesting. I can see the litigation costs being awarded to the
plaintiffs, but I'm not so sure as damages will do much. I know this is
US law, and that is a whole different ball game (I was going to say a
law unto itself!), but I was at a talk only last night where a similar
issue was discussed. This was with regard to copying terms and
conditions from a competitors website, and although the plaintiff could
quite reasonably get the copy taken down, it wasn't considered that
there were any financial damages (or I guess otherwise) to recover -
hence not worth the time and expence to do. Clearly this is establishing
a principle, and there may be some way of claiming damage to reputation
or something I guess, but as they say IANAL (by any stretch of the
imagination!). Interesting to note that it is GPL version 2 as well.

-- 
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