Abstract
Normally in the United States, some provisions of Free and Open Source (FOSS) licenses will be construed as contractual covenants and some will be construed as waivers (or as waivers conditioned on certain actions by the licensee) of certain rights of the licensor under the Copyright Act. The distinction is of great importance – under contract law, remedies are normally limited to proven monetary damages, while under copyright law injunctive relief and statutory damages are normally available even if actual monetary damages cannot be proved.
The determination of whether a particular provision of a FOSS license is a covenant, i.e., a promise by the licensee, or is a condition, i.e., a ground for loss of license privileges, is partially a matter of contract drafting. Even if the parties clearly state that a particular provision is a condition of exercising privileges under a license, the courts may refuse to treat the license as terminated and so may refuse to apply the severe remedies available under the Copyright Act for infringement. Further, since the normal remedy for breach of contract in the United States is money damages for lost expectation, damages to the copyright-holder of FOSS software may be zero.
Unfortunately, the various federal courts of appeals do not agree on the situations in which a license provision terminating a license for particular action or inaction will be enforced.
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Notes
- 1.
The author of the present report was one of the active opponents of Article 2B in the American Law Institute.
- 2.
http://www.uniformlaws.org/Act.aspx?title=Computer Information Transactions Act (last visited January 28, 2015).
- 3.
ST Wu, “Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act: Failed to Appease its Opponents In Light of the Newly Adopted Amendments” (2004) 33 Southwestern University Law Review 307.
- 4.
RW Gomulkiewicz, “Enforcement of Open Source Software Licenses: The MDY Trio’s Inconvenient Complications” (2011) 14 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 106.
- 5.
A Westlaw search conducted August 30, 2013 for “Jacobsen v. Katzer” in the JLR (journals and law reviews, including CLE materials) database found 134 documents.
- 6.
Robert W. Gomulkiewicz, “Enforcement of Open Source Software Licenses: The MDY Trio’s Inconvenient Complications” (2011) 14 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 106.
- 7.
In Specht v Netscape Commications Corp., 306 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 2002), the court held that a consumer who downloaded software was not bound by software license terms that were not clearly brought to the consumer’s attention by the website that supplied the download.
- 8.
The American Law Institute, 2009 Principles of the Law of Software Contracts (St. Paul, MN: American Law Institute Publishers, 2010).
- 9.
Under the usual contractual doctrine of incorporation by reference, I believe that subparagraph (4) should be satisfied if there is a reference to the Internet location from which the standard form can be downloaded.
- 10.
This example is not totally fanciful. Consider the effect of the Stuxnet virus on Iranian centrifuges. http://www.stuxnet.net/ (last visited January 28, 2015).
- 11.
E.g., Effects Associates, Inc. v Cohen, 908 F.2d 555 (9th Cir. 1990).
- 12.
There is a perceptive discussion in RW Gomulkiewicz, “Enforcement of Open Source Software Licenses, the MDY Trio” (2011) 14 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 106 of Vernor v. Autodesk, 621 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 2010); MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment, 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010); and UMG Recordings v. Augusto, 628 F.3d 1175 (9th Cir. 2010).
- 13.
TK Armstrong, “Shrinking the Commons: Termination of Copyright Licenses and Transfers for the Benefit of the Public” (2010) 47 Harvard Journal on Legislation 359.
- 14.
JD Harkrider, “Seeing the Forest through the SEPS” (2013) 27 Antitrust No. 3, 22.
- 15.
DE Dilger, Google appears ready to ditch Android over its intellectual property issues, Apple Insider, (July 28, 2013), http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/29/google-appears-ready-to-ditch-android-over-its-intellectual-property-issues (last visited January 28, 2015).
- 16.
Planetary Motion, Inc. v Techsplosion, 261 F.3d 1188 (11th Cir. 2001).
- 17.
A copy of the petition may be found at: http://web.archive.org/web/19970629194729/http://iplawyers.com/text/linux.htm (last visited January 28, 2015).
- 18.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/trademark (last visited January 28, 2015).
- 19.
M Iansity, “Government IT Procurement Processes and Free Software” (2012) 41 Public Contract Law Journal 197.
- 20.
DoD Open Systems Architecture Contract Guidebook v.1.1, available at https://acc.dau.mil/OSAGuidebook (last visited January 28, 2015).
- 21.
E.g., https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://dii.vermont.gov/sites/dii/files/pdfs/Open-Source-Software-Policy-Final.pdf (last visited January 28, 2015).
- 22.
http://www.dlapiper.com/files/upload/Talend-US-Customs-and-Border-Protection-decision.pdf (last visited January 28, 2015).
References
American Law Institute, 2009 Principles of the Law of Software Contracts (St. Paul, MN: American Law Institute Publishers, 2010).
Armstrong, TK, “Shrinking the Commons: Termination of Copyright Licenses and Transfers for the Benefit of the Public” (2010) 47 Harvard Journal on Legislation 359.
Gomulkiewicz, RW, “Enforcement of Open Source Software Licenses: The MDY Trio’s Inconvenient Complications” (2011) 14 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 106.
Harkrider, JD, “Seeing the Forest through the SEPS” (2013) 27 Antitrust No. 3, 22.
Iansity, M, “Government IT Procurement Processes and Free Software” (2012) 41 Public Contract Law Journal 197.
Wu, ST, “Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act: Failed to Appease its Opponents In Light of the Newly Adopted Amendments” (2004) 33 Southwestern University Law Review 307.
Bartsch v Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., 391 F.2d 150 (2nd Cir. 1968).
Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. [1893] 1 Q.B. 256 (C.A.).
Cohen v Paramount Pictures Corp., 845 F.2d 851 (9th Cir. 1988).
Effects Associates, Inc. v Cohen, 908 F.2d 555 (9th Cir. 1990).
Jacobsen v Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008).
Kraus v Titleserv, 402 F.3d 119 (2d Cir. 2005).
MDY Industries v Blizzard Entertainment, 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010).
Planetary Motion, Inc. v Techsplosion, 261 F.3d 1188 (11th Cir. 2001).
Specht v Netscape Communications Corp., 306 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 2002).
UMG Recordings v Augusto, 628 F.3d 1175 (9th Cir. 2010).
Vernor v Autodesk, 621 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 2010).
Wallace v International Business Machines Corp., 467 F.3d 1104 (7th Cir. 2006).
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Maggs, P.B. (2016). The Uncertain Legal Status of Free and Open Source Software in the United States. In: Metzger, A. (eds) Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and other Alternative License Models. Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21560-0_25
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