[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] The OSM licence: where we are, where we're going

Michael Collinson mike at ayeltd.biz
Wed Jan 9 14:50:09 GMT 2008


At 12:33 PM 1/9/2008, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>Hi,
>
> > Although the recent Artistic License case has taken a different view:
> > http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.blogspot.com/2007/08/new-open-source-
> > legal-decision-jacobsen.html
>
>Hm, being neither lawyer nor native speaker of English nor American
>citizen I my get some things wrong here but the statement
>
>"The second point is very important because it deals with remedies.
>Generally, the remedy for contract violations under US law is
>damages, not "injunctive relief" (which means that the court order a
>party to cease their violation)."
>
>prompts me to ask:
>
>Would that mean that if our license was a contract and somebody
>violated it, he would have to pay us damages, which I (perhaps
>naively) would interpret as "the amount of money we lost due to his
>infringement", i.e. zero dollars?

Yes, if I understand it, your summary is spot on.  That is the main 
motive behind "Free Software Foundation and some lawyers have taken 
the position that open source licenses are not contracts" - copyright 
violation = you stop them continuing the violation versus contract 
violation = you can get damages = 0.

So the obvious inference for us is that "data copyright" is 
meaningless and in the US, if this decision is adopted by higher 
level courts and becomes a precedent, then a contract is meaningless 
too except to stop people with morals. I can see where you are going 
with this one ;-)


Mike
Stockholm






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