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

[Andrew Guard]

On 21/09/2007, Paul Tansom <paul at aptanet.com> wrote:
> ** 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.

It been setted out side of court. BusyBox has agreed to publish the
code upon there website shortly.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/09/25/first-us-gpl-lawsuit-settled-out-of-court/