GPL scores historic court compliance victory

Bad reporting from The Register. There's nothing historical, or even all that interesting, about it as it was a default judgement because the defendant did not even show up.

After plaintiff sued, defendant filed an answer and made initial disclosures. Defendant that stopped responding to the court, and told plaintiff that they would not be defending the action. Defendant then failed to appear for a pre-motion conference. Defendant's law firm them submitted a motion asking to withdraw from the case.

Plaintiffs asked for and received a default judgement. In a default judgement that court assumes that the plaintiffs allegations are all true, and rules accordingly. GPL isn't even really relevant at that point--all that matters is that plaintiffs allege they own the copyrighted works and that defendant does not have a valid license to use them.

"The company's costs could have been lower, but the New-York district court hearing the case took a dim view of the fact that Westinghouse's legal team failed to appear for the discovery phase. .... Westinghouse is currently in General Assignment, an alternative to bankruptcy under California state law, and declined to defend itself."

The reason they didn't show up is that they are bankrupt - so it doesn't matter how much the court ups the fine, they aren't paying it anyway.

The lawyers aren't about to work for a client that isn't going to pay them