Re: SFLC stipulated dismissal of Comtrend without any settlement

[David Kastrup]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:

> There is nothing to "get". If the court finds that it cannot act
> because defendants have infringed upon a non-registered version, the
> plaintiffs can simply register that version and refile the claim. We
> know this from the SimplexGrinnell court decision.

I should think that it is sufficient if enough protected material from
the registered version can be found in the distribution, whether or not
there is an exact version match.

Otherwise one could simply modify a few lines, and lo-and-behold, the
resulting version is no longer registered.  That's silly.

Determining the exact original version (rather than sufficient amounts
of protected material) would only be interesting if different versions
have been licensed under different conditions and/or to different
people.

For example, if I licensed version 1.8 to somebody and find that he is
distributing code derived from an older version 1.6 containing portions
of code that has since then be removed (for whatever reason).

In such cases, determining the exact version makes a difference.

But in the case where registered and contentious version have been made
available to the same people under the same conditions, exact version
matching appears pointless.  Sufficient amounts of matching code should
do the trick.

-- 
David Kastrup