Re: German-GPL victorious in Frankfurt district court

[Alexander Terekhov]

David Kastrup wrote:
> 
> Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:
> 
> > http://www.jbb.de/urteil_lg_frankfurt_gpl.pdf
> >
> > Man oh man. This is fun.
> >
> > Hero Welte gets around 3K EURO and D-Link must tell him from whom and
> > how many routers they've bought (I'm pretty sure that the stuff came
> > from Taiwan) and subsequently resold. The rest of the case was
> > dismissed.
> 
> Uh, Alexander?  Reality check.  The court decided to use a lower key

Check it yourself, dak. The phrase "the rest of the case was dismissed"
corresponds to "In Übrigen wird die Klage abgewiesen." which appears 
after impositions (impostion of award and imposition of obligation to 
provide information). 

And regarding reality check, consider that prior to being sued by Welte, 
D-Link signed GPL compliance declaration (out of court), made the source 
code available, and even informed the customers.

Welte sued D-Link nevertheless. Think of it. What's the message?

[...]
> > The defendant raised the claim of illegal price-fixing and viral
> > contracting in violation of EU Art 81. And the GPL-moronized judge
> > concluded: fine, but it doesn't matter!
> 
> Yes, those kinds of thing happen outside of Terekhov-Lala-land.  

You're being an idiot. Consequences for antitrust violation aside for a
moment, Appellate Judge Hoeren (Copyright Senate): 

------
g. Finally, there is the important question of the consequences of the
assumed invalidity of the GPL. The Munich court argued that the
question of the enforceability of the GPL was in no way relevant.
According to the Bavarian judges, if the GPL is legally ineffective,
the user does not have a license and is thus violating copyright law.
On the face of it, that sounds plausible, but it is
not. If somebody offers software on the Internet for downloading and
links the download with invalid general terms, he can hardly sue for
copyright infringement. Instead, the validity of the standard terms is
a matter for the software distributor: if he wants to use invalid
contractual terms, he bears the risk of their use.
------

The district court in Frankfurt was blinded and GPL-moronized by 
Welte's attorneys just like the district court in Munich.

So what? Just yet another proof that the GPL has amazing power to 
moronize people (including judges at district level).

regards,
alexander.