Zeo Developer Terms of Use

[Ben Reser]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Chris Travers <chris at metatrontech.com> wrote:
> The only cases that I am aware
> of which have covered interoperability (Galoob v. Nintendo, Static
> Control v. Lexmark, and so forth) where specific vanilla copyright law
> was at issue (i.e. not access control under the DMCA), the US courts
> have always found functional interoperability of software to be
> noninfringing.  Indeed the only case I can think of that went the
> other way involved the question of whether software that altered the
> audiovisual output of a game infringed on derivative works protections
> on the basis that the new output was a derivative work of the old
> output, and that's not remotely the same question.

MDY v Blizzard is worth looking at within this realm.  The appeal
court overturned some of the lower courts ruling that applies here and
the case is still working its way through the courts.  I'll admit this
is a case where the court may be biased against this specific type of
interoperability and that it has a lot of unusual specifics (server
providing copyrighted data) that may not apply in general.  I point it
out only as it shows an situation where copyright is being used as a
weapon against interoperability.

Figured you might find it interesting if you hadn't already been following it.