Posts Tagged ‘unfair competition’

GLP & Unfair competition / another way of use

Monday, November 14th, 2011

I just finished one well-written article by Till Jaeger named Enforcement of the GNU GPL in Germany and Europe. It is available for free on JIPITEC. What have drawn my attention is this paragraph.

Even companies that distribute GPL products without holding copyrights may soon begin to enforce the GPL by relying on unfair competition law (instead of copyright law) in order to obtain the complete corre-sponding source codes of improved software solutions from their  competitors.

It refers by means of the footnote to following literature.

See G. Spindler, Rechtsfragen bei open source, p. 128 and T. Jaeger/A. Metzger, Open Source Software, 2. ed, para. 336 et seq

Interesting thing to test in the court I would say. Last week I blogged on another intersection of unfair competition and GPL licensing (in Slovak) in regard to AVM v. Cybit case.

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Rešpektovanie GPL & nekalá súťaž

Friday, November 11th, 2011

FSFE práve spolupracuje na veľmi zaujímavom nemeckom prípade AVM v. Cybits. Spor prebieha tu v Berlíne a trošku mám možnosť k nemu pričuchnúť. Pre detaily prípadu zájdite prosím tu. O čom chcem ale písať. Pred dvoma dňami prvostupňový súd vydal svoje rozhodnutie vo veci samej. Čo do autorskoprávneho deliktu prípad zmietol zo stola, no žalobcovi priznal negatórne nároky z nekalosúťažného deliktu. Hoci písomné vyhotovenie rozsudku ešte nemáme k dispozicií je do istej miery jasné o čo ide.

Cybits ako nadobúdateľ licencie síce rešpektuje GPL licenciu, ktorá je základom sporu, no svojím konaním pri autorskoprávne dovolenej modifikácií počítačového programu spôsobil náklady navyše pre AVM. To totiž vďaka chybám, ktoré pri modifikácií vznikli muselo vynaložiť väčšie náklady na zákaznícku podporu svojho produktu, ktorý bol takto softvérom Cybits modifikovaný. Taktiež mohlo utrpieť meno samotnej spoločnosti AVM, keďže zákazníci chyby routru skôr asociujú s výrobcom routrov ako so softvérom od Cybits, ktorý firmware na routroch modifikoval. Samozrejme to sú moje dohady, prečo súd povolil distribúciu a modifikáciu programu v súlade s GPL len za podmienky, že to potom nespôsobí technické problémy.

Inými slovami. Odkaz tohto súdneho sporu, ktorý sa pravdepodobne ocitne na odvolacom súde je, že ak staviate na práci iných na základe GPL licencií myslite aj na to, že neférové prenesenie nadbytočných nákladov vzniknutých z vášho konania sa vám môže vypomstiť. Riešenie je preto jediné – buďte férový a hrajte férovo.

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AVM v. Cybits (non-Copyright arguments)

Friday, November 4th, 2011

AVM Computersysteme Vertiebs GmbH” (AVM) v. “Cybits AG” looks like very interesting case. Plaintiff, the AVM, is using unfair competition law and trade mark law to enforce the copyright rights it has “lost” due to GPL licensing. Background of the case is here.

FSFE reports that AVM claims following:

The focus of the hearing, however, lay less on the area of Copyright but more on trademark and competition law issues. AVM doesn’t deny that the GNU GPL licensed software installed on the routers may be changed by the users, but maintains the opinion that no altered software may then be reinstalled on the routers. AVM relied on two main arguments:

AVM routers with the software changed by Cybits’ software might possibly reach third parties who would have no knowledge of the firmware changes and who may therefore attribute possible router functional changes to AVM even if they were actually caused by the software of Cybits. Therefore, the trademark rights of AVM were infringed. This also constituted an act of unfair competition.

To me, I can´t see any trade mark use by Cybits. Even if that would be the case, it should be reminded that protection beyond confusion is only present in case of reputed trade marks (art. 5(2) of TM directive). Also, if the contract allows you to do something, enforcing the very same on the basis of unfair competition law seems to be quite non-sense. But one never, know .. let´s see what the Distric Court of Berlin thinks of this.

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