A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

Re:A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss ... by dhimes on Friday May 12, 2017 @08:34AM (#14323401)

This was a ruling that the contract between the plaintiff and defendant existed, not on the validity of the contract (which is the GNU GPL license).

Defendant (Hancom) was trying to say that because they didn't sign anything they didn't have a contract.

But Hancom "represented publicly that its use of Ghostscript was licensed under the GNL GPU"

Therefore, the Judge ruled that in their own words they publicly acknowledged the contract.

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Re:A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss ... by ovi256 on Friday May 12, 2017 @08:49AM (#14323505)

It's a very narrow ruling, conditioned on the fact that the defendant, Hancom, publicly acknowledged they were using Ghostscript under GPL. It does not say much, if anything, but IANAL, about a defendant who would not have acknowledged this, which seems like the more interesting question.

Common law judges are very prudent in their ruling.

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Re:A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss ... by imanewsman on Friday May 12, 2017 @08:49AM (#14323504)

The defense argued that the license was not enforceable. In the order, the federal court laid out the reasons the license _is_ enforceable. Here's the order:

https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califo...

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