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A judge who gets it

Story: Open Source Copyrights Legally EnforceableTotal Replies: 2
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jezuch

Aug 15, 2008
3:00 AM EDT
Quoting:The appeals court also ruled that Jacobsen could sue for monetary damages, even though his product is free. "The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration," the court said.


Right on! It's about time to shatter this "only money is wealth" myth :)
tracyanne

Aug 15, 2008
3:07 AM EDT 		As I understand it, that judge had a lot of help from FOSS friends of the Court, to come to that understanding. An excellent result.
dinotrac

Aug 15, 2008
7:27 AM EDT 		Good to see sense prevail, although...

not sure what the language on monetary damages actually means.

In this case, it might turn out ok -- the free software was incorporated into non-free software, so monetary damages can be imputed from money made, etc.

And, of course, US copyright law allows for statutory damages -- damages awarded when you can't prove monetary damage. That allows the court to way the egregiousness of the infringement and award a sum up to -- I forget -- per offense.

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