Add-on Modules under the GPL: “Derivative Works” despite separated distribution

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Miriam Ballhausen

If your add-on modules are dynamically loaded into GPL-licensed software at runtime, you’ll have to license the add-on modules under the GPL’s terms when distributing them along with the GPL-licensed software; it is a clear-cut case of a “derivative work” under the License. The case is less clear, however, if the add-on module is distributed separately from the GPL-licensed software, as may, for example, happen where the recipient has already installed the GPL-licensed software from a different source. Continue reading →

Open Source Software, License Compliance and the OpenChain Working Group

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Miriam Ballhausen

So you set up an open source license compliance program in your company. You educate your employees and you make sure you know how they handle open source software. But what about the software, which is supplied to you? Do you know how your supplier handles open source software? Can you trust that they know what they are doing when it comes to open source license compliance? Continue reading →

My day at FrOSCon: Interesting stuff from DTAG and my talk on “GPLv2 and embedded systems”

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

A couple of months ago, the organizers of the FrOSCon, one of Germany’s big Open Source developer conferences, asked me if I could present a talk at this year’s edition of the conference. I gladly accepted, and so I spent last Saturday in (West) Germany’s former capital Bonn. I had a tremendous day, even though I could attend just a few of the almost a hundred talks, workshops and seminars. Continue reading →

E-Commerce Law Reports with our article on Oracle v. UsedSoft

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

As a blogger you are always happy to receive feedback from your readers. So I was really pleased when shortly after posting my recent comments about the CJEU’s UsedSoft decision, the E-Commerce Law Reports approached me to ask whether I could write a more detailed article about the case for their August 2012 issue. Recently published, this issue also contains a number of other fascinating contributions by colleagues from around the world on a variety of important topics such as the online collection of consumer data, search engines’ liability for misleading search results, the cloning of games, advertising on Twitter, etc. Check it out: http://www.e-comlaw.com/e-commerce-law-reports/

New leading cases on the destiny of sub-licenses when the main license is terminated

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

Are sub-licenses affected when the main license they are derived from ceases to exist? Last week, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) issued two decisions dealing with this question and answered with an unequivocal “No”. No written opinion has been published yet (this usually takes a while) so that we have only the official German press release to rely on. But this press release reveals already a few pretty interesting and important things. Continue reading →

German Parliament Considering the Future of Open Source Software

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Dr. Till Jaeger

In 2010, the German Parliament set up a commission of enquiry (“Enquete-Kommission”) on “Internet and Digital Society” that looks at future strategies in this field of policy (http://www.bundestag.de/internetenquete/Hintergrund_Enquete/). The idea behind such commissions, which have existed and exist in a number of other fields as well, is to collect and evaluate information about the impact of technical, economic and social developments in the relevant fields to provide the Parliament with recommendations for its further political decisions.

The Internet and Digital Society commission just recently turned to a topic of the highest importance for the use and development of digital technologies when it decided to form – among several others – a project group called “Interoperability, Standards, Open Source”. Continue reading →

The ECJ surprises in Oracle v. UsedSoft

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

Yesterday, the European Court of Justice handed down its ruling in Oracle v. UsedSoft. The court followed largely the Advocate General’s trail (we reported), but at some – crucial – point, it took a different, rather surprising direction which will have considerable impact on the marketing of software (and maybe other copyright-protected works, too). Continue reading →

On Liability and Liability Clauses in German Law

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Julian Hoeppner

When you negotiate agreements between German companies and companies with a – broadly speaking – common law background, especially the U.S., one issue that keeps appearing is the parties’ liability for damages. Groundhog day, if you will.

“Liability” is certainly a difficult legal term to being with, especially as you have to first decide what you are actually talking about when using the word. Continue reading →

ifrOSS Suggests Legislation on OSS Licenses and Bankruptcy

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

A few days ago, our colleagues at the ifrOSS (Institute for Legal Questions on Free and Open Source Software) published a proposal for an amendment to the German Insolvency Act that would better protect the open source licensing model in case the licensor goes bankrupt. Continue reading →

Düsseldorf Court on the Use of Trade Marks for Open Source Software

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

For a while now, lawyers have been struggling with the relationship between (trade mark) protection of software names and Open Source licensing. Last month, the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf) handed down an important decision that may shed some light on the intriguing issues linked to trademarking Open Source software. We publish this decision (the German original and an English translation) and explain what it is about. Continue reading →

Can APIs Be Copyrighted?

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

There is a lot of noise (for example, here, here, here, here, and here) out there about this week’s verdict in Oracle v. Google, especially about the following question: Are interfaces protected by copyright? I stumbled across quite a few places (see here, here, and here) where experts pointed to the ECJ’s SAS Institute v. World Programming ruling while discussing this question. According to them, the ECJ clearly stated last week that interfaces enjoy no copyright protection. Is this really what the ECJ said? Continue reading →

SAS v WPL: No Copyright Protection for Programming Languages

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Julia Gebert

Hooray: On 2 May the ECJ ruled that “neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression of that program and, as such, are not protected by copyright in computer programs.” Continue reading →

More on exhaustion

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

Just after finishing our recent post on the exhaustion doctrine (ECJ “Usedsoft”), I came across two other news reports touching upon the same issues. The first concerned an ongoing dispute between Microsoft and a German used license trading company . The second pointed to an (unintentionally comical) decision of the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart (Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart). Continue reading →

ECJ Advocate General on Used Software and Used Licenses

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

Is it legal to sell so-called “used software” when this software has been obtained via download? And what about “used licenses”? These questions have been a hot topic for quite some time now for IT businesses and lawyers – and finally they have been brought to the attention of the European Court of Justice. This week, the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Mr. Yves Bot, published an opinion dealing with some of the intricate problems of the exhaustion (or “first sale”) doctrine. Continue reading →

Termination of a Perpetual Software License under German Law

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Julian Hoeppner

I have just (goes to show how much time I really have to scan the law journals for relevant stuff) stumbled upon a very interesting decision by the District Court of Cologne published in the February edition of Germany’s famed “C&R” (i.e. “Computer & Recht” = “Computer & Law”) regarding the terminability of perpetual software licenses under German law for material breaches of contract. As per the District Court of Cologne the answer is: Sure you can! Which is a bit surprising, really. Continue reading →

German IT Law

JBB's Blog on German and European Technology and Data Privacy Law

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