which country's law?

[SamBC]

IANAL, but my understanding, at least here in the UK, is that when no
jurisdiction is specified the licensee may choose. I could easily be wrong,
but that is what have previously been lead to believe.


Sam Barnett-Cormack

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Reilly [mailto:paul.reilly at 3glab.com]
> Sent: 21 June 2001 17:21
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: GPL: which country's law?
>
>
> I speak as a systems integrator, located in the United Kingdom.
>
> Unless I've missed something, the GPL V2 doesn't specify in which
> country's
> courts any dispute should be heard. (By comparison, the Mozilla PL
> specifies the courts of California; QPL specifies Norway, and so on).
>
> Has anyone looked at where that leaves a systems integrator
> outside the US
> who builds a product using, say, an American distribution of Linux? There
> are a number of issues:
>
>   - If I want my own legal advisors to research GPL for the purpose of
> compatibility with our own business model, should that be against the
> framework of UK law, or is only US law relevant?
>
>   - Secondly (and this applies to US companies too), if I create
> a product
> which in some way incorporates GPL code (whether that 'incorporation' be
> very loose or very tight), and then I export it (maybe worldwide) what
> country's laws am I subject to? Could a customer in country X decide that
> his laws should apply, and choose to interpret GPL accordingly,
> possibly to
> my serious disadvantage? The GPL only mentions the case of
> countries where
> use of a program might be restricted by patents or copyright, but it
> doesn't unfortunately cover the case where a country's courts might
> interpret the linking (static vs dynamic) issue very differently
> from the US.
>
> Could I get round this by creating some sort of wrapper around
> the GPL that
> fills this vacuum and positively defines the country of law?
>
> Many thanks,
> Paul Reilly
> 3G LAB Ltd, Cambridge, UK
>
>