GPL and LGPL question - legal

[John Muller]

At 09:09 AM 5/19/99 -0500, Patrick St. Jean wrote:
>On Tue, 18 May 1999, Bruce Perens wrote:
>Did that law student take a look at some of the federal circuit court
>rulings concerning shrink-wrap licenses?  The gist of them is that unless
>there is a signature on a document, they're pretty much worthless.  That
>means that the legal remedies would amount to copyright infringement.
>

This statement might have been correct a few years ago, but the strong
recent trend is to uphold the validity of shrinkwrap and clickwrap
licenses.  The leading case is ProCD v. Zeidenberg in the 7th Circuit,
http://laws.findlaw.com/7th/961139.html, but there are other recent
decisions from the Illinois U.S. District court,
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/doj/y2k/sld001.htm, the Washington State
Court of Appeals, http://www.wa.gov/COURTS/opinions/413040_O01.txt, and the
New York Appellate Division in Brower v. Gateway 2000.

John Muller
johnmuller at earthlink.net
jmuller at brobeck.com
"The ladder of law has no top and no bottom"