An automobile trade association which tried to copyright its
specifications, then sued a member for implementing them, has lost
a significant legal battle.
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco for The
Register
This article has been reproduced from The Register, with permission.
An automobile trade association which tried to copyright its
specifications, then sued a member for implementing them, has lost
a significant legal battle. It's a victory for the
Right to Repair campaign being waged by independent car
mechanics. Car control systems are increasingly computerised, and
the small repair shops find themselves being locked out of
technical information they need.
In Drew Technologies Inc.
vs
Society of Automative Engineers (
SAE
), the latter
laid claim to "ideas, procedures, processes, methods of operation,
concepts, principles or discoveries" in the Society's own technical
standards documentation and sued DrewTech for copyright
infringement. In 2002 DrewTech wrote software compliant with a
draft
SAE
standard and published it on SourceForge
under the GPL.
DrewTech president Mike Drew is a participant in the
SAE
task force. In October 2003
SAE
said
the information was copyrighted and sued DrewTech. It objected to
the use of the
GPL
, and demanded a license fee for the
implementation.
"At no time has
SAE
ever authorized anyone to
convert the J1699c source code to a GNU General Public License or
any other open source free software or ever authorized the
placement of a copyright notice in a name other than
SAE
's on the J1699c source code," claimed the
SAE
.
The trouble is, the
SAE
had no right to claim
copyright – because copyright law doesn't protect the ideas, only
the expression or implementation of those ideas. Many standards
bodies copyright a reference implementation, but the
SAE
had not. An eloquent case was made by DrewTech's
lawyers, who cited Thomas Jefferson.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself
without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me," Jefferson once wrote.
DrewTech responded with a lawsuit alleging violation of the
GPL
and violation of the DMCA, as well as
contributory copyright infringement.
As a result, the
SAE
has surrendered at the
discovery stage. It has agreed not to assert its copyright claim
and will pay DrewTech $75,000.
There's excellent in depth coverage about the case at
Groklaw, where it's ambiguously billed as "A GPL Win in
Michigan", and where surprise is expressed that the
DMCA
was invoked to defend the
GPL
.
But this confusion simply reflects the sclerotic nature of the
online discussions about copyright. As Eben Moglen, who helped
draft the
GPL
has
pointed out, the
GPL
relies on strong copyright
law.
The
GPL
remains "untested in court" in the sense
that no
US
judge has made a definitive ruling. But the
fact that an increasing number of
GPL
cases have
fallen before even reaching this stage gives credence to Moglen's
view that the
GPL
is "an industrial strength legal
contract". This should give encouragement to FOSS supporters
everywhere.
What Bill Gates misleadingly called an misleadingly called an
"intellectual property Pacman" lives to chomp another day.
© The Register
2005
