Open Source and Industry Alliance
US Phone: +1 202.783.0070
Fax: +1 202.783.0534
www.osaia.org

For Immediate Release
January 25, 2005

For further information contact:

Will Rodger
Director of Public Policy
Open Source and Industry Alliance
will@osaia.org
+1 202-783-0070 x 105

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

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and 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.

Davidson & Associates, on behalf of its subsidiary Blizzard, sued Internet Gateway over alleged violations of US copyright law. Among other tihngs, Davidson claims that Internet Gatway violated its copyrights when it effectively duplicated the appearance and many of the functions of Blizzard’s online game site, battle.net. The company also claims that Internet Gateway violated aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act when it desgined its competing service without including a way to verify whether players were using legal copies of Blizzard games when they played on the site.

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.

“Once again, some copyright holders want to choke off lawful and legitimate competition by using current law to thwart efforts to create interoperable products,” OSAIA President Ed Black said. “When Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it specifically granted an exemption permitting exactly these sorts of acts. 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,” Black continued. “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 software, not fewer.”

See the brief here:

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About OSAIA
OSAIA, an association of companies, not-for-profit organizations and individuals dedicated to the creation, use and sustainability of open source software.