gnu-misc-discuss
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: SFLC's GPL court enforcement -- track record


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: SFLC's GPL court enforcement -- track record
Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:19:21 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> 
>> John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> writes:
>> 
>> > Arnoud writes:
>> >> I've never seen a US case involving the GPL come to a verdict.  Of course
>> >> there are the German cases, but given the different legal system you can
>> >> hardly compare the outcome there to the USA.
>> >
>> > In the USS defendants who know they are going to lose settle out of court.
>> 
>> Well, according to rjack, defendants who would have the case thrown out
>> of court (for lack of plaintiff's standing) prefer to settle instead.
>> 
>> Why they would do that is a bit mysterious, though.  Maybe the lawyers
>> fear that they'll lose their job once they win in court?
>
> There are many reasons why defendants prefer to settle even if they 
> believe that their lawyers will win in court.

Most involving deep pockets and continued litigation.  Now if we have
cases like "netfilter author against Cisco" or similar, it does not seem
exactly likely that Cisco is afraid of running out of cash or lawyers.

So what reasons do you assume for the many GPL cases that get settled
out of court for defendants with big pockets and plaintiffs with small
ones?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]