Free copyright license upheld Fed Circuit Court of Appeals
From Larry Lessig's blog, a major victory for open licenses:
I am very proud to report today that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (THE "IP" court in the US) has upheld a free (ok, they call them "open source") copyright license, explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. (The specific license at issue was the Artistic License.) This is a very important victory, and I am very very happy that the Stanford Center for Internet and Society played a key role in securing it. Congratulations especially to Chris Ridder and Anthony Falzone at the Center.huge and important news: free licenses upheldIn 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.
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Go read the opinion. The amount of understanding these judges show is breathtaking. Why is it that courts always seem so smart? Maybe it's not fair to compare them with the other branches of government?
Hooray!
Great NEws!
But Matt4077, let's not get carried away. Many courts, including the US Supreme Court (Ledbetter v. GOodyear ahem) don't seem so smart to me these days.
it is nice when they get it right though.
This makes me very happy.
good good good.
Bad, bad reporting. They have not upheld a free copyright license.
What happened is that the district court rejected a motion for a preliminary injunction because they thought it didn't look like a regular license, and so didn't meet the standard criteria for an injunction. They did not reject the case (and would probably have ruled in favour of the free license in the end anyway), they just said that they weren't prepared to assume he was going to win. Appealing this point was not strictly necessary, although it probably has tactical value (injunctions make people more inclined to settle).
The appellate court said that their reasoning was flawed, it really is a copyright license, and has sent it back to the district court for reconsideration.
People are probably being confused because the appellate court ruling cited the facts of the case as background. They haven't ruled on any of those points (although they did note that the defendant had failed to dispute any of them - not the same thing, that doesn't set a precedent). They've just ruled on the question of whether the Artistic license is a copyright license or not. This is not a very interesting question.
The case itself has not been decided yet.
YAY!
YIPPY!
YAY!