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| Authored by: soronlin on Wednesday, October 17 2012 @ 05:37 PM EDT |
That's my reading too. "Yes we stole it, but RedHat has only added a tiny
amount of code, and most of that is not covered." It's an interesting
reading of copyright law.
If for example, I wrote one short poem which was included in an anthology with
200 others, could I sue someone who copied the entire book? My claimed
infringement is only 0.5% of the whole, which on its face sounds like de
minimis. My guess is that I could, and the law should ignore the other 199 poems
and consider only my own. It would be good if the other authors were suing
alongside me, but it shouldn't be necessary. But IANAL.
If this theory wins, then many FOSS projects will have to rethink their
submission requirements.
I wonder if RedHat can make this a class action.
But I'm not too worried; I think any court will try hard to defeat this legal
theory.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Ian Al on Thursday, October 18 2012 @ 03:37 AM EDT |
Red Hat’s copyright counterclaim is barred due to
copyright
invalidity to the extent that Red Hat claims rights
to works that are
functional,
They are replaying Google's defence against Oracle
over the Java APIs. The judge agreed that anything that was a purely functional
requirement was not protected by copyright.
I think that Twin Peaks got
it wrong. RedHat still own the valid copyright. It is up to Twin Peaks to prove
that the bits they copied were purely functional, as a defence.
Since
they copied the entire program, comments and all, I think they are whistling in
the wind.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid! [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: DieterWasDriving on Thursday, October 18 2012 @ 07:59 PM EDT |
I like point 85: they appear to be claiming that they have been violating the
copyright for so long that a five year statute of limitation applies.
There are many flaws with trying to use that defense. The most obvious is that
they have continued to distribute.
It's one thing to raise every possible defense. It's another to claim a defense
that doesn't stand up to even a few seconds of thought.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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