Open source license litigation
Free and open source software (FOSS) is distributed under a variety of free-software licenses. These licenses differ significantly from other kinds of software licenses. Legal action against open source licenses involves questions about their validity and enforceability. This page summarizes significant litigation regarding open source licenses and the legal system's approach to these licenses. Copyright litigation. Jacobsen v. Katzer (2008). Jacobsen v. Katzer ("Jacobsen") addressed the extent to which a copyright holder of free public use software can control the modification and use of their work by another party. Jacobsen made code available for  public download under an open source public license, Artistic License 1.0, which Katzer copied into their own commercial software products without recognizing the code's source. Jacobsen argued that the terms of the license defined the scope of the code's potential uses and that use outside these restrictions infringed copyright. The license holder expressly stated the terms for modification and distribution of the material. The U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals established that license terms are enforceable copyright conditions. Since Katzer failed to affix the required copyright notices to the derivative software, their use of the code constituted copyright  infringement under the terms of the license. The case established that some violations of open source licenses can be claimed as infringements of copyright. BusyBox litigation (2007-13). During 2007 to 2009, Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) filed a series of copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf the principal developers of BusyBox. These lawsuits claimed violations of the GNU "General Public License Version 2". In September 2007 they filed a lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia, Inc. alleging that Monsoon had violated the GNU General Public License (GPL) by including BusyBox code in products without releasing the source code. In October 2007, an SFC  press release announced the parties had reached a financial settlement, and Monsoon had agreed to comply with the GPL. In November 2007 SFC filed a lawsuit against Xterasys Corporation and High-Gain Antennas, LLC. In December 2007, SFC announced a settlement. Xterasys agreed to stop shipment of infringing products until it published the complete source code licensed under GPL and to pay an undisclosed financial settlement. In December 2007, SFC filed a lawsuit against Verizon Communications, Inc. alleging Verizon had violated the GPL by distributing BusyBox in wireless routers without providing corresponding source code. A settlement announced in March 2008  included an agreement to comply with the GPL and to pay an undisclosed financial settlement. In December 2009, SFC filed a lawsuit against 14 companies, including Best Buy, Samsung, and Westinghouse alleging violation of the GPL. By September 2013, all of the defendants had agreed on settlement terms, except for Westinghouse, against whom default judgment was entered. Free Software Foundation, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc (2009). On December 11, 2008, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) initiated a lawsuit against Cisco Systems in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The FSF claimed various products sold  by Cisco under the Linksys brand violated the licensing terms of many programs for which FSF held copyright, including GCC, GNU Binutils, and the GNU C Library. Most of these programs were licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2, and a few under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) represented FSF in the suit. The FSF contended that its copyrighted code was found in multiple Linksys models, and in the program QuickVPN. The plaintiffs asked the court to enjoin Cisco from further distribution of Linksys firmware containing FSF copyrighted code and also  asked for damages amounting to all profits Cisco earned from sales of those products. On May 20, 2009, the parties announced a settlement agreement that included Cisco appointing a director who would ensure Linksys products comply with free-software licenses. Cisco also made an undisclosed financial contribution to the FSF. Contract litigation. Artifex Software Inc v. Hancom Inc (2017). Following Jacobsen v Katzer, Artifex Software Inc v Hancom Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California centered on breaches of open source software licenses, including breaches of contract as well as infringements of copyright. Artifex  is the exclusive licensor of the software product, Ghostscript, under the GNU General Public License Version 3. Hancom is a South Korean software company that used Ghostscript in software they were selling. This case concerned Hancom's failure to distribute or offer to provide the source code for their software. The GNU GPL provides that the Ghostscript user agrees to its terms, thus creating a contract, unless the user obtains a commercial license. Artifex alleged that Hancom did not obtain a commercial license to use Ghostscript, and claimed that its use of Ghostscript was licensed under the GNU GPL. These  allegations sufficiently plead the existence of a contract. This case establishes that the GNU GPL constitutes a contract between the owner of the source code and the person/company that uses that code through the license. This sets the precedent that allows licensors to bring claims of breach of contract where a party does not comply with the terms of a license. SCO Group Inc. v. International Business Machines Corporation (2017). SCO Group Inc. v. International Business Machines Corporation was litigated in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. It covered a complex contract with claims made  in tort concerning contractual duties. Claims of code ownership were disputed. Eben Moglen, the counsel for the Free Software Foundation (FSF), released a statement regarding the lawsuit: As to its trade secret claims, which are the only claims actually made in the lawsuit against IBM, there remains the simple fact that SCO has for years distributed copies of the kernel, Linux, as part of GNU/Linux free software systems. [...] There is simply no legal basis on which SCO can claim trade secret liability in others for material it widely and commercially published itself under ["the GNU GPL Version 2"] that  specifically permitted unrestricted copying and distribution. On May 14, 2003, SCO Group announced they would no longer distribute Linux. SCO said it would "continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux customers and hold them harmless from any SCO intellectual property issues regarding SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux products". SCO claimed and maintains that their employees used code licensed under the GPL without proper authorization, and thus the license terms were not legally binding. For code to be licensed under the GPL, the copyright owner must place a GPL notice before the code, and SCO did not add the  notices. Software patenting litigation. Diamond v. Diehr (1981), Bilski v. Kappos (2010), and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (2014). These U.S. Supreme Court cases defined law concerning computer program patent eligibility. The intellectual property implemented in computer programs does not inherently fall under patent law. Computer programs cannot be patented, but can be copyrighted. In Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) submitted a brief to the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to support the long-standing court precedents limiting patent rights for computer programs. The open source community has an interest in  limiting the reach of patent law so that free software development is not impeded. The SFLC expressed support for the machine-or-transformation test which limits patenting of software processes to computers designated for specific purposes. The Court's ruling aligned with ideas set out in the SFLC submission. Enfish LLC v. Microsoft Corp. (2016). The ruling in Enfish LLC v Microsoft Corp. supported the patent-eligibility of software operating on a general-purpose computer. Antitrust litigation. Wallace v. International Business Machines Corp. (2006). In Wallace v. International Business Machines Corp., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit  determined that under U.S. law the GPL Version 2 did not contravene federal antitrust laws. This suit followed a dismissed action, Wallace v. Free Software Foundation where the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GPL Version 2 were accused of price fixing. Wallace's argument was that a ‘copyleft’ system created by FSF was a project with IBM, Novell and Red Hat intended to undercut the prices of potential rivals. Wallace argued this could be governed under antitrust law which regulates predatory pricing. The purpose of antitrust law is to protect consumers from predatory pricing, by promoting competition to keep  prices low. However, Mr. Wallace was attempting to use anti-trust law to drive prices up, by suggesting it was impossible to compete with IBM's prices. Under antitrust law, Wallace had to prove not only an injury to himself but also to the market, which he failed to do. The claim was quickly dismissed because of the increasing number of proprietary operating systems and persisting competition in the market despite some software being free of charge. So it was confirmed that the GPL and open source software cannot be challenged by antitrust laws. Open source software fair use  litigation. Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. (2018). In 2018, Oracle America Inc v. Google LLC was adjudicated by the United States Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. The case concerned Google's fair use of source code licensed by Oracle under the GNU GPL Version 2. Google had copied 37 Application Programming Interface packages (APIs) to aid in building its free Android software for smartphones and launched a product which competed with Oracle's. The code's license required improvements of the code, or derivative code, to be freely shared. A licensing fee would be required to avoid publishing the  code or to compete with the code's owners. Google used the APIs in a competing product without paying a licensing fee, which Oracle contended was a breach of copyright. The Court of Appeals decided in favor of Oracle, after considering the applicability of fair use laws, and found Google failed on a majority of accounts. In 2019, the United States Supreme Court decided to allow an appeal, with Google facing liability for $9 billion in damages if the court ruled against them. In April 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–2 decision that Google's use of  the Java APIs fell within the four factors of fair use. The ruling did not establish whether APIs can be copyrighted. The decision reversed the Federal Circuit ruling and remanded the case for further review. Open source software trade secrets litigation. In 2005, a Korean case in the Seoul Central District Court considered a case in which the defendants used code developed for a previous employer and licensed under the GNU GPL Version 2 to develop a competing product. Trade secrets fall under intellectual property laws if their contents are of competitive property value and, unlike patents, are not required  to be novel or progressive. The purpose of prohibiting trade secret infringement is to avoid unfair advantage. One defendant had retired from the company but privately kept a copy of the source code and provided it to a rival company, shortening the rival company's development period by two months. The Court ruled that the GPL was not material to the case. The defendants argued that trade secrets are impossible to maintain while complying with GPL in distributing the work, so they could not be in breach of trade secrets. This argument was considered groundless and the defendants were sentenced  following criminal proceedings. Other/international open source license litigation. Planetary Motion v. Techsplosion (2001). The United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit case, ruled "Software distributed pursuant to [the GPL] is not necessarily ceded to the public domain" (dicta). Computer Associates v. Quest (2004). The outcome case in the United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division determined that though Computer Associate's source code contained previously known source code (GNU Bison Version 1.25) available under the GPL, that does not prevent them from protecting their own source code. There is a special exception in the GPL to allow the  unrestricted use of output files for versions of Bison after and including version 1.25. Welte v. Sitecom Germany (2004). In April 2004 a preliminary injunction against Sitecom Germany was granted by Munich District Court after Sitecom refused to cease distribution of Netfilter's GPL-licensed software in violation of the terms of the GPL Version 2. The court's ruling said:Defendant has infringed on the copyright of plaintiff by offering the software 'netfilter/iptables' for download and by advertising its distribution, without adhering to the license conditions of the GPL. Said actions would only be permissible if defendant had  a license grant. Welte v. D-Link (2006). On September 6, 2006 in the District Court of Frankfurt, the "gpl-violations.org" project prevailed against D-Link Germany GmbH regarding D-Link's copyright-infringing use of parts of the Linux Kernel in devices they distributed. The judgment stated that the GPL is valid, legally binding, and stands in German court. AFPA v. Edu4 (2009). September 22, 2009 the Paris Court of Appeals ruled that Edu4 violated the terms of the GNU GPL Version 2 by distributing binary copies of the remote desktop access software VNC while denying users access to its  corresponding source code. Olivier Hugot, attorney of Free Software Foundation France said:Companies distributing the software have been given a strong reminder that the license's terms are enforceable under French law. And users in France can rest assured that, if need be, they can avail themselves of the legal system to see violations addressed and their rights respected...But what makes this ruling unique is the fact that the suit was filed by a user of the software, instead of a copyright holder. It's a commonly held belief that only the copyright holder of a work can enforce  the license's terms - but that's not true in France. People who received software under the GNU GPL can also request compliance, since the license grants them rights from the authors. Free/Iliad (2011). This was an October 2008 case in Paris Regional Court. Free/Illiad is an internet service provider. The routers they distributed contained software licensed under GPL Version 2, but Free/Iliad didn't provide the source code or the GPL text. Free/Illiad's argued that the routers are their property (not sold to customers) and still on their network, so their actions did not  amount to "distribution" under the terms of the GPL. A secret extrajudicial agreement was reached in July 2011. Free has since released the source code and informed users of the GPL software used in their routers. China's courts rulings on open-source licensing (2018). The Beijing Intellectual Property Court (BIPC) heard a case from business-software developer Digital Heaven claiming software developer YouZi had copied the code for three plug-ins contained in its "Hbuilder" development tool. In 2018, the court found that YouZi violated copyright. This decision proved controversial since the legal test employed by the court differed  from reasoning used by United States' courts. YouZi argued that since Hbuilder is based on a GNU open-source module known as "Aptana", licensed under General Public Licence Version 3, HBuilder is also open source software. The BIPC decided it was only necessary to identify whether the three specific plug-ins used by YouZi are subject to the GPL. The Aptana-GPL Exception License stipulates that identifiable sections of the modified version can be seen as independent works and would not fall under the GPL. Without further examination of the open source licences, the court ruled that the GPL did  not apply to the three plug-ins and therefore Hbuilder could not be considered a derivative work licensed under the GPL.