| This excerpt, most likely, is where the SCO trial would have
mirrored this
one.
The result, if this case, and point of view is won by Boies,
is that
they then take this result to the entire FREE
SOFTWARE population of products,
and apply this (with
copyright having over 100 years of protection now). The
result, is DEATH to free speech in software.
Here is the passage we most
likely would have seen applied
to the SCO v Linux trial(s).
Boies:
I'm not sure this is going to be terribly helpful. It
depends on whether you
view the "plain English version" or
simply an idea, or being creative
expression. If the latter,
and they are copying that, and interpreting that,
then it's
a derivative work.
If it's just an idea, then the court is
probably right.
The court will note that everyone before this litigation
that everyone thought that a clean room implementation
didn't save you from
getting a license.
All the clean room permitted you to do was to stop you
from
licensing the code. But the clean room didn't excuse you
from getting a
specification license.
This is the battle of Gettsburg for the
entire Free Software
Movement. Can Boies, kill, free speech expression in
software, when it relates to commonly, normally
unprotectable,
expresssion?
It is sad that it has gotten to this, but, we all knew, that
someday, someone would try to do this. If Google wins (and
wins on appeal)
then, the foundation for allowing creativity
in software programming lives, if
Google loses, it dies.
Hopefully, when this gets to the Supreme Court, that
the
court then is technical enough to be able to figure out what
is "right" -
and sides with FREE EXPRESSION, meaning FREE
SPEECH (vs what they did in
Bilski, that was very short
sighted, and ignorant of tech on their part).
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