KEEP COMPETITION, REJECT FALSE COPYRIGHT CLAIMS, OSAIA AND CCIA TELL FEDERAL COURT

File Under: 2005, Copyright

Jan 25, 2005

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and its subsidiary, The Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA), filed a friend-of-the-court brief Monday in the Federal Appeals Court in St. Louis responding to yet another threat to innovation, open source, and competition in the software industry.

The groups told the Appeals Court the law does not shift the burden of enforcing Davidson's copyrights to an independent software developer such as Internet Gateway. They urged the court to overturn the lower court ruling. CCIA and OSAIA point out that numerous courts and federal law already protect the right of software developers to produce software that mimics others.

CCIA and OSAIA President Ed Black said, "Once again, some copyright holders want to choke off lawful and legitimate competition by using current law to thwart efforts to create interoperable products. When Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it specifically granted an exemption permitting circumvention for exactly these types of situations. "

"This is a reoccurring pattern of abuse that must be rejected by the courts. The impact of a negative ruling will stifle innovation and reduce the number of competing firms. Interoperability is critical to innovation and competition. It allows the market to create new products and services that maximize the offerings of previous innovations," Black continued.

"This case gets to the very basis of high-tech competition and the future of open source software itself," said Ed Black. "No company should be prohibited from producing a better, cheaper product that does everything the competition does. We need more groups like Internet Gateway and its open source Bnetd package, not fewer."

The case centers o­n a complaint by Davidson & Associates - o­n behalf of its subsidiary Blizzard - that Internet Gateway created a competing gaming site by circumventing interfaces within Blizzard’s games. These interfaces were created to restrict access to o­nly Blizzard’s own gaming site. By doing so, Internet Gateway was not able to verify whether players were using licensed copies. Davidson also asserts that Internet Gateway violated Davidson's copyrights when it produced a service that is essentially indistinguishable from its own.

The brief can be found here