French Court docket Points Damages Award for Violation of GPL – Copyleft Currents
On February 14, 2024, the Court docket of Attraction of Paris issued an order stating that Orange, a significant French telecom supplier, had infringed the copyight of Entr’Ouvert’s Lasso software program and violated the GPL, ordering Orange to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for ethical damages.
This case has been ongoing for a few years.
Entr’ouvert is the writer of Lasso, a reference library for the Safety Assertion Markup Language (SAML) protocol, an open commonplace for identification suppliers to authenticate customers and go authentication tokens to on-line providers. That is the open protocol that allows single sign-on (SSO). The Lasso product is dual licensed by Entr’Ouvert under GPL or commercial licenses.
In 2005, Orange gained a contract with the French Company for the Growth of Digital Administration to develop components of the service-public.fr portal, which permits customers to work together on-line with the federal government for administrative procedures. Orange used the Lasso software program within the answer, however didn’t go on the rights to its modifications freed from cost underneath GPL, or make the supply code to its modifications accessible.
Entr’Ouvert sued Orange in 2010, and the case wended its manner by the courts, turning on, amongst different issues, problems with proof of Entr’Ouvert ‘s copyright curiosity within the software program, and whether or not the case correctly sounded in breach of contract or copyright infringement.
On March 19, 2021, the Appeals Court docket first rejected Entr’Ouvert’s claims for copyright infringement, saying that the case was a breach of contract declare. The Court docket of Cassation, which is the supreme courtroom of France, reviewed the case and issued an order on October 5, 2022 overturning the choice of the Court docket of Attraction. The case was then remanded to the Court docket of Attraction, which issued its order this week.
The compensatory damages had been primarily based on each misplaced earnings of the plaintiff and disgorgement of earnings of Orange. Ethical damages compensate the plaintiff for hurt to fame or different non-monetary damage.
Word: I patched this info collectively from numerous articles, largely learn in translation. The dates within the lawsuit course of had been inconsistent in these sources. If I discover any errors, I’ll replace this put up.
Replace 2/22/24: Here is the choice in French.