A significant court victory for open source licenses
by Colin Dodd
Michael Tiemann calls this a “HUGE, CELEBRATION-WORTHY DECISION.”
Groklaw – Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit Overturns Jacobsen v. Katzer
This just in: the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has just overturned [PDF] the lower court’s decision in Jacobsen v. Katzer, the model train case. The appeals court held that open source license conditions are enforceable as a copyright condition and that the Artistic License is no different in that respect.
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Whew! As the court put it, “Copyright holders who engage in open source licensing have the right to control the modification and distribution of copyrighted material.” So, now the case goes back to the lower court to reconsider, based on this ruling, the question of injunctive relief. So. “The heart of the argument on appeal concerns whether the terms of the Artistic License are conditions of, or merely covenants to, the copyright license,” the court of appeals writes. And it finds that they are conditions, so relief is by means of copyright law, not contract.
