Re:Our lawsuit against ChessBase
by tzs on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @07:10PM
(#27900431)
Germany does not appear to have statutory damages the way the US does, but they have something else that could work here. They seem to have three kinds of damages possible [1].
1. Lost profits due to the infringement.
2. The profits the infringer made from the infringement.
3. The amount the infringer would have had to pay to license the work to use the way they did it if they had requested such a license from the copyright owner.
The first one would likely not apply to something that is solely licensed under GPL, but the other two might, especially #2.
I'm curious how #3 is determined.
There is something similar in the US for patent infringement damages. That involves the court trying to determine what would have happened in a hypothetical negotiation if the patent owner had been willing to license the patent and the infringer had wanted to license the patent.
That can work because usually with patents you can compare to other patent in the same or related field that are about as valuable and have been licensed out. I don't think that there are a lot of open source world class chess engines that are dual licensed for proprietary use that a court could use for comparison.
1. Lost profits due to the infringement.
2. The profits the infringer made from the infringement.
3. The amount the infringer would have had to pay to license the work to use the way they did it if they had requested such a license from the copyright owner.
The first one would likely not apply to something that is solely licensed under GPL, but the other two might, especially #2.
I'm curious how #3 is determined.
There is something similar in the US for patent infringement damages. That involves the court trying to determine what would have happened in a hypothetical negotiation if the patent owner had been willing to license the patent and the infringer had wanted to license the patent.
That can work because usually with patents you can compare to other patent in the same or related field that are about as valuable and have been licensed out. I don't think that there are a lot of open source world class chess engines that are dual licensed for proprietary use that a court could use for comparison.
[1] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cef58d76-21a2...