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Groundbreaking acknowledgment of Free Software in Italy
From the law court of Venice comes the first order in Italy that protects the license GPL.

The decision made on December 13th, 2021, by the law court of Venice represents an important achievement for Free Software in Italy.

In fact, it represents an important step in the direction of strengthening the protection of intellectual works distributed through free software licenses in all their forms, a concrete progress for Italian jurisprudence on the subject and more generally for the country.

The event comes from an appeal made by Ovation Srl, the owner of the software Dynamic.ooo - Dynamic Content for Elementor , one of the most successful plugins for Elementor, which is the most important page builder in the world to create websites with WordPress.

The company, which distributes the software through a GNU GPL v3 license, assisted by Lawyers Carlo Piana and Alberto Pianon of Array, sought relief for its program whose code was being redistributed by a company founded by two former developers who left the Dynamic.ooo development team . Such distribution was made without complying with the clear directions of the GPL license, which expressly includes the acknowledgment of the original work as a condition for its grant.

In this particular case, the defendants correctly created content from Dynamic.ooo, which was allowed in the license regulations, but the way they distributed the resulting code was found to be inconsistent with the conditions laid down by the GNU GPL. In particular, this was done without listing the changes made and without mentioning the owner of the original rights. They also proceeded with the unlawful behavior ignoring the formal termination notice, which is the first protection tool implemented to safeguard the developers who decide to share their code in a free form.

The unprecedented decision of the Venice court law has recognized full legal value to the GPL licenses , and it is an important step forward towards the safeguard of Free Software, clearly explaining that "Free" doesn't mean free from conditions.

The order issued by the Judge explained with clarity that the Free Software grants rights to everybody, but requires compliance with conditions by whom distributes it , and therefore orders the defendants to immediately remove the infringing code and to announce the decision on their own website and social media platforms, applying the current legislation regarding the protection of the Copyright of software.

The operational measures are as follows:

The Judge, considering the articles 156 Ida and 700 cpc,

1. Orders the defendants (Marco Poglie, Francesco Pesce and Nerds Farm Srl) to cease any use made available to the public, as well as any publications, of the software named E-addons for Elementor, if not after having eliminated every recurrence (exception made for a maximum amount of 500 lines) of the code included in the 1.9.5.2 version of Dynamic Content for Elementor, sub doc. 2 produced by the Applicant, within seven days of the communication of this provision.

2. Sets a fine to be paid by the defendants (at the expense of each infringer) amounting to 100 euro for each day of delay in complying with this measure until the fifteenth day after notification of the measure; and 300 euro for each day of delay after the fifteenth day after notification of the measure

3. Orders the publication of an excerpt of this order, by and at the expense of the parties resisting each other, on a page of its own website e-addons.com, with a reference on the home page in double the normal character size of the site; the same rule applies to their own official Facebook page.

4. Places at the expense of the defendants the litigation costs of the applicants, for the sum of euro 5,000.00 in compensations, euro 545.00 in disbursements, as well as the 15% in general expenses, including VAT and CPA.

Friday, December 17, 2021