2019-11-04 18:22:19

by nipponmail

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Will no-one sue GrSecurity for their blatant GPL violation (of GCC and the linux kernel)? - He is violating, but you can also rescind the license

You do know, correct?, that the Copyright holder can simply rescind the
license if he is displeased with the way the licensee is behaving -
since the license is not supported by a contract.

The licensee would then rush to the Federal Court in his district to
seek a declaratory judgement regarding his rights, and then you're in a
diversity and federal-question suit.

But that is an option where the licensee paid no consideration for the
non-exclusive licensee grant (and no: obeying a pre-existing legal duty
is not sufficient for consideration)

I would like to note that in the Kasner(sp)? decision in the 9th circuit
the uneducated like to bandy about; the Artistic License was found NOT
to be a contract but a simple copyright license.

Also in the lower-court (California) Artifex decision the court didn't
even identify the "GPL" correctly, conflating it with the
offer-to-do-paying-bushiness preliminary writing (pay us, or accept the
GPL), but the court then allowed the Copyright holder to choose which
theory to go ahead with: Contract damages for the price of the
proprietary license OR pure Federal Copyright damages under the GPL
(because the GPL is not a contract: it's only a license. If the court
found it to be a contract it would limit the recovery to contract
damages under state law: which is WHY in Kasner the violator wanted the
Artistic license to be deemed a contract: damages of 0 (free))

However, GrSecurity is violating the GPL so you can just sue for
Copyright damages off the bat (as my other 2 posts quickly explain, I
haven't repeated the arguments here).