SFLC files 2nd intimidation suit

[rjack]

The SFLC has filed an infringement suit captioned “ERIK ANDERSEN, an 
individual, and ROB LANDLEY, an individual v. HIGH-GAIN ANTENNAS, L.L.C.”

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2007/nov/20/busybox/highgainantennas.pdf 


The SFLC alleged in the complaint in part:


"8. Under the License, Plaintiffs grant certain permissions to other 
parties to copy, modify and redistribute BusyBox so long as those 
parties satisfy certain conditions. In particular, Section 2(b) of the 
License, addressing each licensee, states:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or 
in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to 
be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms 
of this License. . .

15. Upon information and belief, on August 5, 2006, Defendants were 
notified by a third party of the relevant terms of the GPL and 
Defendant’s infringement thereof. This notification was provided via an 
e-mail requesting the complete and corresponding source code of the 
GPL-licensed software on an Infringing Product."


The designated donee beneficiaries of the GPL are obviously "all third 
parties". Clearly the plaintiffs are "parties" to the GPL contract and 
cannot be a member of the class "all third parties." Therefore the 
plaintiffs can suffer no injury by the source code not being made 
available to "all third parties".

The Supreme Court in 1975 ruled:

"Apart from this minimum constitutional mandate, this Court has 
recognized other limits on the class of persons who may invoke the 
courts' decisional and remedial powers. First, the Court has held that 
when the asserted harm is a "generalized grievance" shared in 
substantially equal measure by all or a large class of citizens, that 
harm alone normally does not warrant exercise of jurisdiction. Second, 
even when the plaintiff has alleged injury sufficient to meet the "case 
or controversy" requirement, this Court has held that the plaintiff 
generally must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot 
rest his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third 
parties." Warth v. Seldin 422 U.S. 490 (1975)

http://72.41.57.74/standing.html

The only people with legal "standing" to complain about a violation of 
the GPL are the third party donee beneficiaries.

ROFL :)