So much for the armchair lawyers here at Vn who thought this was a slamdunk copyright infringement case. That thread a few months back now I guess was pretty informative and the massive epeen battling that went on is certainly put to rest regarding the topic of copyright infringement that was discussed ad nauseum.
The below block addresses the conclusion of the copyright infringement only. As Gutter suggested reading it in it's entirety via a PDF reader would be wise:
Quote:
posted:[12] We conclude that for a licensee’s violation of a contract
to constitute copyright infringement, there must be a
nexus between the condition and the licensor’s exclusive
rights of copyright.4 Here, WoW players do not commit copyright
infringement by using Glider in violation of the ToU.
MDY is thus not liable for secondary copyright infringement,
which requires the existence of direct copyright infringement.
Grokster, 545 U.S. at 930.
It follows that because MDY does not infringe Blizzard’s
copyrights, we need not resolve MDY’s contention that Blizzard
commits copyright misuse. Copyright misuse is an equitable
defense to copyright infringement, the contours of which
are still being defined. See Practice Mgmt. Info. Corp. v. Am.
Med. Ass’n, 121 F.3d 516, 520 (9th Cir. 1997). The remedy
for copyright misuse is to deny the copyright holder the right
to enforce its copyright during the period of misuse. Since
MDY does not infringe, we do not consider whether Blizzard
committed copyright misuse.
We thus reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment
to Blizzard on its secondary copyright infringement
claims. Accordingly, we must also vacate the portion of the
district court’s permanent injunction that barred MDY and
Donnelly from “infringing, or contributing to the infringement
of, Blizzard’s copyrights in WoW software.â€
I did cut out the first 11 points and if you have the time and want to read it in a more thorough manner, just look for the MDY vs Blizzard entertainment doc. on the link gutter has listed.
This exact ruling is what i and a few others were debating in the previous dated thread. I had no qualms with the rest of the rulings against MDY just that the copyright infringement deal was bogus and that ruling would have been horrendous for the industry
It'll be neat to see how the law unfolds and develops from here, especially that the court re-confirms that the end user is indeed a licensee and not an owner.
Thanks for the link Gutter, I had been interested in how this was panning out. This arena of law is still very primitive and it'll be interesting to see how it develops for the future.
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ea I Ucmed for 12 days straight.."
