[ale] Fwd: [Politech] German court grants injunction against GPL infringement [ip]

[Robert Reese]

Of interest!

*********** BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE  ***********
On 4/19/2004 at 11:34 PM Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> wrote:

>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: [Fwd: [EDRi-forum] Preliminary Injunction for GPL Infringement 
>Granted  byGerman Court]
>Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 12:46:35 +0200
>From: Ralf Bendrath <bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
>Reply-To: bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de
>To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
>
>Something for Politech?
>R.
>
>[forwards snipped. --DBM]
>
>> From http://www.netfilter.org/news/2004-04-15-sitecom-gpl.html
>
>
>Of interest to editors and journalists covering:
>Linux, Free Software, Open Source, Copyright Law
>
>MUNICH COURT GRANTS PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION FOR INFRINGING USE OF GPL
>LICENSED SOFTWARE
>
>BERLIN, Germany - Apr. 14, 2004 -- The Munich district court granted a
>preliminary injuction against Sitecom Germany GmbH
>(http://www.sitecom.com/). This injunctive relieve has been applied by
>the
>netfilter/iptables project (http://www.netfilter.org/).
>
>Sitecom is offering a wireless access router product (WL-122) based on
>software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), developed
>by
>the netfilter/iptables project.
>
>The GNU GPL is a license commonly used for many free software projects,
>such
>as the Linux Operating System Kernel.  The GPL licenses software free of
>cost, but requires any redistributor to provide the full source code.
>
>According to the court order, Sitecom did not fulfill the obligations
>imposed by the GNU General Public License covering the
>netfilter/iptables
>software. In particular, Sitecom did not make any source code offering
>or include the GPL license terms with their products.
>
>Following a warning notice, Sitecom refused to sign a declaration to
>cease
>and desist. Thus, the netfilter/iptables project was compelled to ask
>the
>court for a preliminnary injuction, banning Sitecom from distributing
>its
>product, unless Sitecom complies with all obligations imposed by the GNU
>GPL.
>
>"To my knowledge, this is the first case in which a judicial decision
>has
>been decreed on the applicability and the validity of the GNU GPL", says
>Dr.
>Till Jaeger, partner of the Berlin and Munich based law firm JBB
>Rechtsanwaelte (http://www.jbb.de/) that represented the
>netfilter/iptables
>project in the litigation.
>
>This preliminary injunction follows a series of out-of-court settlement
>agreements that the netfilter/iptables project has concluded within a
>short
>period of time. When asked about the reasons for the sudden rise in
>legal
>pressure for GPL compliance, Harald Welte, Chairman of the Netfilter
>Core
>Team states:
>
>"We are not in any way opposing the commercial use of free and open
>source
>software. Specifically, there is no legal risk of using GPL licensed
>software in commercial products.  But vendors have to comply with the
>license terms, just like they would have to with any other, even
>proprietary
>software license agreement."
>
>
>About the netfilter/iptables project
>
>The netfilter/iptables project provides state-of-the-art network
>security
>software for Linux firewalling, packet filter and network address
>translation (NAT), distributed as Free Software under the terms of the
>GNU
>General Public License.  Being part of the linux operating system
>kernel,
>the software is running on virtually every Linux installation.
>
>For more information on the project or the software, visit
>http://www.netfilter.org/
>
>
>Media contact:
>netfilter core team
>Harald Welte
>Phone: +49-30-24033902
>Email: laforge at netfilter.org
>
>_______________________________________________
>Politech mailing list
>Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
>Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)

*********** END FORWARDED MESSAGE  ***********

Type: DH/DSS 4096/1024 AES-256
Key ID: 0xA771A40C
Fingerprint: CAE2 81CA A7CD 6681 341C  E3A9 BC3C 04E5 A771 A40C