Free Software legal news
Read about ground-breaking decision of the Court of Justice of EU, abuse of copyright against an Android developer, AG's opinion in awaited European interoperability ruling and much more.
Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute
Koha is a free library management system. This software has been the subject of an ongoing fight with a US company called LibLime; it seems that LibLime now thinks it is entitled to a trademark on the Koha name in New Zealand. See article by LWN.net;
Mobile "rootkit" maker tries to silence critical Android developer
A data-logging software company is seeking to squash an Android developer’s critical research into its software that is secretly installed on millions of phones, but Trevor Eckhart is refusing to publicly apologize for his research and remove the company’s training manuals from his website.See article by ArsTechnica;
Censorship in Name of Copyright Violates Fundamental Rights
The Court ruled that forcing Internet service providers to monitor and censor their users' communications violated EU law, and in particular the right to freedom of communication. See article by La Quadrature du Net;
Liberation by software
Power has long been able to control the media. But the free software movement enables a radically democratic future. Which way the network behaves is determined solely by the software that comprises it. Freedom of the press, freedom of information, freedom of thought itself are now "implemented" rather than "declared", "protected" or "guaranteed".See article by Eben Moglen in the Guardian;
Creating New Property Rights on the Basis of General Legal Concepts
In two cases recently decided by two different senates of the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), the following issue was raised: To what extent can the filming of sports events organized by someone else, on the one hand, and the photographing of someone else’s physical property, on the other hand, be legally controlled by the organizer of the sports event and the owner of the property respectively? See article by Prof. Dr. Thomas Dreier in the JIPITEC;
Advocate General favours interoperability in Europe
The Opinion of Advocate General Bot in SAS v World Programming, the case before the Court of Justice of European Union, has now been published. It seems to favour World Programming and interoperability.See article by Technollama;
US Supreme Court Case Could Affect Developers' Secondary Patent Liability
The United States Supreme Court will decide a case this term that could determine whether free software developers are liable for patent infringement by users of their softwareSee article by Software Freedom Law Center;
Pirate Party MEP: eVoting is a bad idea
E-voting may sound modern and well when you first hear the idea, but unfortunately there are fundamental problems with electronic voting that does not dissolve. [..] However, there are other ways to take advantage of modern technology to improve voting in general elections. See article by Christian Engström;
For previous Free Software legal news please consult blog of Matija Šuklje and blog of Hugo Roy.