In today’s digital age, the question isn’t whether there is open source software being used in a company’s products, but how it is being used and what license governs its use. Open source is ubiquitous.  Despite its widespread use over the past decade, the provisions of open source licenses have been interpreted by only a handful of U.S. and foreign courts.  Open source-related disputes do not usually reach court as open source advocacy groups that enforce open source license provisions often work out a resolution between the parties without litigation.

However, one recent open source dispute has reached the courthouse. As discussed below, a new case filed in California state court could test the enforcement of one of the most common family of open source licenses, the GNU General Public Licenses or “GPL.” If the plaintiff is successful, the case could have the effect of expanding enforcement of GPL licenses under the rubric of consumer protection and allow a broad range of parties to bring claims under the GPL as third party beneficiaries of those licenses.

Last week, the Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. (“SFC”) filed a complaint against smart-TV manufacturer Vizio, Inc. (“Vizio”) alleging a failure to comply with the GNU General Public License Version 2 (“GPLv2”) and GNU Lesser General Public License Version 2.1 (“LGPL v2.1”) (collectively, the “GPL Licenses”).  SFC alleges that, over the last four years, Vizio distributed smart TVs that included executable versions of Vizio’s “SmartCast code.  The SmartCast code, it alleged,  contained modifications to the Linux kernel and other code obtained by Vizio pursuant to the GPL Licenses.  SFC asserts that Vizio did not release the corresponding modified source code (as enhanced, modified or otherwise altered by Vizio) or accompany their smart TVs with a written offer to supply such code upon demand, as is required under the GPL Licenses. (Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. v. Vizio, Inc., No. 30-2021-01226723 (Cal. Super. Orange Cty Filed Oct. 19, 2021)).

In an innovative initiative in the battle against the Coronavirus, the newly-formed Open COVID Coalition (the “Coalition”) launched the Open COVID Pledge (the “Pledge”), a framework for organizations to contribute intellectual property to the fight against COVID-19. Pursuant to the Pledge, rightsholders can openly license intellectual property to facilitate the development of tools and technologies to counter the COVID pandemic. These would include the manufacturing of medical equipment and testing kits, as well as the development of software, AI and biotech solutions to contain and end the virus. Many major technology companies and other organizations have signed on to the Pledge.

The Coalition created a form of license which participants may to use to fulfill the pledge.  Under the license, the Open COVID License 1.0 (“OCL”), the pledgor grants a “non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up license (without the right to sublicense)” to exploit the IP (other than trademarks or trade secrets) in products, services and other articles of manufacture “for the sole purpose of ending the ‘COVID-19 Pandemic’ (as defined by the World Health Organization, “WHO”) and minimizing the impact of the disease, including without limitation the diagnosis, prevention, containment, and treatment of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The term of the OCL is retroactive to December 1, 2019 and runs until one year after WHO declares the end of the pandemic. Under the OCL, the pledgor “will not assert any regulatory exclusivity against any entity for use of the Licensed IP” in accordance with the license grant, and agrees to not seek injunctive or regulatory relief to prevent any entity from using the licensed IP. As with some traditional open source licenses, the licensed IP is granted without any warranties and the license is suspended if the license threatens or initiates any legal proceeding against the pledgor. Lastly, all copyright and related rights granted under the OCL are deemed waived pursuant to the Creative Commons 1.0 Universal License (public domain dedication).

In this long-running dispute that has been previously dubbed “The World Series of IP cases” by the presiding judge, Oracle America Inc. (“Oracle”) accuses Google Inc. (“Google”) of unauthorized use of some of its Java-related copyrights in Google’s Android software platform. Specifically, Oracle alleges that Google infringed the declaring code of certain Java API packages for use in Android, including copying the elaborate taxonomy covering 37 packages that involves multiple classes and methods.  Google had declined to obtain a license from Oracle to use the Java APIs in its platform or license the same under an open source GPL license; instead it copied the declaring code from the 37 Java API packages (over 11,000 lines of code), but wrote its own implementing code.  Google designed it this way, believing that Java application programmers would want to find the same 37 sets of functionalities in the new Android system callable by the same names as used in Java.

Last week, the district court in SCO, Inc. v. Novell (D. Utah), the current act in the long-running drama of the SCO litigations aimed at the Linux operating system, refused to grant SCO’s motion to set aside the jury verdict rendered last March. The jury concluded that Novell owned the copyrights in the UNIX code that SCO claims is infringed by the Linux operating system.  Once again, open source advocates were  celebrating, and with good reason. The ownership of the UNIX code goes to the heart of all of the claims that SCO has raised in the other litigations, and if thet verdict stands, those litigations are effectively over. Although SCO’s long-standing fee agreement with its attorneys apparently includes another trip to the U.S. Court of Appeals, it will be up to the Bankruptcy Trustee and the Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to decide whether that trip is actually made. We will learn their decision in due time.
 
Meanwhile, there are many answers to the question of what can be learned from the SCO litigations, but one of them has nothing to do with the future of open source software, or the potential futility of high-stakes, bet-the-company litigation tactics. For attorneys who are engaged in the daily exercise of drafting and negotiating complex technology licensing deals, one lesson is this: When there is a communications or knowledge gap between the lawyers that give final shape to a business deal  and the executives that will live with the deal over time, the result may be a fundamental and detrimental misunderstanding of just what the deal accomplished.