A Federal Hearing about Rights under GPL


In our previous update regarding our copyleft enforcement lawsuit against Vizio, we talked about how Vizio “removed” the case to USA federal court (namely, the Central District of California), and how we filed a motion to “remand” the case back to state court. While this all seems like minor legal wrangling early in a case, this very first skirmish in our case goes to the very heart of the right for software repair for consumers. While it won't be a final decision in the case, this motion will be the first indication whether the federal courts view the GPL as purely a copyright license, or as a contract, or as both. That question has been central to legal debate about the GPL for decades, and, thanks to our case, for the first time, a federal Court will directly consider this question.
Our view (and the view of many attorneys whose opinions we trust) and which is supported by substantial case law, is that the GPL functions as both a copyright license and a contract, and that third parties who receive distribution of GPL'd (and LGPL'd) software are third-party beneficiaries. We've done both copyright-based and contract-based enforcement, and both have their advantages. Contract-based enforcement as a third-party has advantages that are central to the GPL's policy goals. Consumers are the first to discover violations in the first place. Consumers are the most likely to utilize complete, corresponding source code (CCS) to enhance their use of the products they have purchased. Third-party, contractual based enforcement gives consumers legal authority when they ask companies for access to the source code that should be available to them. In other words, this approach gives consumers the ability to ask the Court directly for the most important thing that copyleft assures: a right to receive the CCS and “the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable”. Indeed, in our suit we have asked only for access to the source code, not for any money.
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