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United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34, was a landmark American antitrust law case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the personal computer (PC) market, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java.
United Linux was an attempt by a consortium of Linux distributors to create a common base distribution for enterprise use, so as to minimize duplication of engineering effort and form an effective competitor to Red Hat. The founding members of United Linux were SUSE, Turbolinux, Conectiva and Caldera International. The consortium was announced on May 30, 2002. The end of the project was announced on January 22, 2004.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC.
SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., commonly abbreviated as SCO v. IBM, is a civil lawsuit in the United States District Court of Utah. The SCO Group asserted that there are legal uncertainties regarding the use of the Linux operating system due to alleged violations of IBM's Unix licenses in the development of Linux code at IBM. The lawsuit was filed in 2003, it has lingered on through the bankruptcy of SCO Group and the adverse result in SCO v. Novell, and was reopened for continued litigation by order of a new judge on June 14, 2013. Pursuant to the court order reopening the case, an IBM Motion for Summary Judgment was filed based upon the results of the Novell decision. On December 15, 2014, the judge granted most of IBM's motion, thereby narrowing the scope of the case, which remained open. On March 1, 2016, following a ruling against the last remaining claims, the judge dismissed SCO's suit against IBM with prejudice. SCO filed an appeal later that month. In February 2018, as a result of the appeal and the case being partially remanded to the circuit court, the parties restated their remaining claims and provided a plan to move toward final judgement.
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This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.
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The GNU General Public License is a series of widely used free software licenses or copyleft that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. These GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.
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Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. was a case in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington regarding the applicability of the first-sale doctrine to software sold under the terms of so-called "shrinkwrap licensing." The court held that when the transfer of software to the purchaser materially resembled a sale it was, in fact, a "sale with restrictions on use" giving rise to a right to resell the copy under the first-sale doctrine. As such, Autodesk could not pursue an action for copyright infringement against Vernor, who sought to resell used versions of its software on eBay. The decision was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which issued a decision on September 10, 2010, reversing the first-sale doctrine ruling and remanding for further proceedings on the misuse of copyright claim. The Ninth Circuit's decision asserted that its ruling was compelled by Ninth Circuit precedent, but observed that the policy considerations involved in the case might affect motion pictures and libraries as well as sales of used software.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Trump was a case brought before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), hotel and restaurant owner Eric Goode, an association of restaurants known as ROC United, and an Embassy Row hotel event booker named Jill Phaneuf alleged that the defendant, President Donald Trump, was in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, a constitutional provision that bars the president or any other federal official from taking gifts or payments from foreign governments. CREW filed its complaint on January 23, 2017, shortly after Trump was inaugurated as president. An amended complaint, adding the hotel and restaurant industry plaintiffs, was filed on April 18, 2017. A second amended complaint was filed on May 10, 2017. CREW was represented by several prominent lawyers and legal scholars in the case.
Apple Inc. v. Pepper, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case related to antitrust laws related to third-party resellers. The case centers on Apple Inc.'s App Store, and whether consumers of apps offered through the store have Article III standing under federal antitrust laws to bring a class-action antitrust lawsuit against Apple for practices it uses to regulate the App Store. The case centers on the applicability of the "Illinois Brick doctrine" established by the Supreme Court in 1977 via Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, which determined that indirect consumers of products lack Article III standing to bring antitrust charges against producers of those products. In its 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that since consumers purchased apps directly through Apple, that they have standing under Illinois Brick to seek antitrust charges against Apple.
Open source license litigation involves lawsuits surrounding open-source licensed software. Many of the legal rights of open source software licensors enforceable against users violating licensing agreements are untested by the U.S. legal system. Free and open source software (FOSS) is distributed under a variety of free-software licenses, which are unique among other software licenses. Legal action against open source licenses involves questions about their validity and enforceability.
References
- 1 2 Wallace v. International Business Machines Corp., 467F.3d1104 (7th Cir.2006).
- ↑ Eric J. Sinrod (November 22, 2006). "How GPL fits in with the future of antitrust regulation". News.com. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
- ↑ "Case 1:05-cv-00618-JDT-TAB Document 1" (PDF).
- ↑ "Case 1:05-cv-00618-JDT-TAB Document 30" (PDF).
- ↑ "Case 1:05-cv-00618-JDT-TAB Document 41" (PDF).
- ↑ "Case 1:05-cv-00618-JDT-TAB Document 42" (PDF).
- ↑ Peter Brown (2006). "The GPL tested in US courts - Wallace Vs FSF". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved May 21, 2006.
- ↑ Anne Broache (2006). "Open Source Earns Legal Victory". Archived from the original on January 19, 2013. Retrieved November 12, 2006.
