Dlink Cease And Desist Order Over Gpl Use


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[ http://gpl-violations.org/news/20060922-dl..._frankfurt.html ]

On September 6, 2006 the district court issued its judgement, confirming the
claims by gpl-violations.org, specifically its rights on the subject-matter
source code, the violation of the GNU GPL by D-Link, the validity of the GPL
under German law, and D-Links obligation to reimburse gpl-violations.org for
legal expenses, test purchase and cost of re-engineering. Only the amount of
the legal expenses was considered too high by some insignificant amount of 300
EUR. Therefore, this decision marks a clear-cut victory for
gpl-violations.org. D-Link may file an appeal against the judgement.

Mr. Welte continues:

"It was very sad to see D-Link starting to argue that the GPL would not apply .
Given D-Link's repeated license violations, it can be thankful that we've
never asked for any kind of damages, but merely to cease and desist from
further infringements, plus our expenses. I start to wonder whether they
actually deserve such a mild strategy."
 
DLink probably thought along the lines of the people that wrote the software and applied the license would not want to spend the time and legal fees to take them to court. Most likely forgot that someone can do it on there behalf :)

I've no idea why they didn't think the GPL was legally binding however.

Hopefully, this will be a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to other companies thinking of similar tactics.
 
nickspoon posted on Dec 23 2006 at 06:14 AM said:
As do Linksys. Safecom don't.
IIRC, there was a bit of trouble getting Linksys to give up their GPL-ed sources as well. They're in compliance now and have been for a while now but they weren't always.
 
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