Stockfish vs. ChessBase for GPLv3 violation: court hearing soon | Hacker News Reader

Stockfish vs. ChessBase for GPLv3 violation: court hearing soon

stockfishchess.org

196 pointsacifani20 comments

I'm happy that after years of nonchalant abuse of GPL by ChessBase, Stockfish authors have finally taken the matter to the courts. I wish the damages claimed were more.

Lets just hope they actually win (and judges actually understand the matter or people, who do advise), otherwise this is a disaster.

German courts don't have the best reputation when it comes to technical subject matter.

>German courts

compared to what? in the case of the "round corners", the Germans ruled in favor of not-infringing, while the US ones awarded Apple $1B+...

American courts are an extremely low bar for comparison.

This is complete nonsense without any data to back it up.

how about the case of Christoph Hellwig vs VMware for stealing vmklinux under the GPL. german courts basically dismissed him twice for not being procedural, which gave VMWare ample time to dodge a GPL bullet and remove the code from their kernel without admitting any fault or wrongdoing.

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/

That was a design patent not a case of technical implementation.

In the United States, a design patent is a form of legal protection granted to the ornamental design of a functional item. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers (Fig. 1) and computer icons are examples of objects that are covered by design patents.

[...]

A US design patent covers the ornamental design for an object having practical utility. An object with a design that is substantially similar to the design claimed in a design patent cannot be made, used, copied or imported into the United States without the permission of the patent holder. The copy does not have to be exact for the patent to be infringed. It only has to be substantially similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

There were already several cases (over the last couple of decades) in Germany where the GPL was part of the proceedings.

They understood the license just fine back then

It’s not a disaster, because in Germany there is Roman law, as opposed to America’s common law. It’s different and it makes a sentence something much less disastrous.

You are correct about the law, but that is also an idealized statement. They do use precedent as well in Germany. Judges do draw from previous comparable verdicts. A previous failed attempt can significantly lower chances for a future success in a similar case. For each book of law, you can buy books with commentary, relating to previous cases and what their outcome was. This has actual influence on future verdicts.

It's going to be interesting because it's in Germany, which is in Europe. There's been a recent court case in France that ruled that copyright claims based on the GPL were invalid because it is a contract, and you can't claim both copyright and a contract on something, so it should be dealt with in civil contract court. (Or in other words, granting a license like the GPL invalidates all copyright claims you might have in the future!)

The article is quite light on details, I wonder on what exact grounds they filed their claim.

This is a civil case if I am not mistaken. Earlier cases in Germany where decided in favour of the obligations of the GPL.

I can't even imagine what that means. How do stock photos work in France?

I think the case you're thinking of was in France:

https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/15/french-judge-rules-gpl-lice...

So both cases are in Europe?

> you can't claim both copyright and a contract on something,

That makes no sense to me. Licensing copyrighted work is pretty standard, and it must be in France too? The GPL is a license, which is indeed a contract. But surely people license (enter into a contract between copyright holder and user which grants certain allowed uses) copyrighted work in France routinely?

I think the distinction is that if the parties involved don't have a contract between them, copyright law applies.

But if there is a contract in place, then copyright law no longer applies, and you instead have to resolve any disputes as if they were violations of a contract.

The difficulty being that the GPL allows anyone to enter into a contract without even consent of the other party, and the contract law courts may not see that as a valid contract.

> The difficulty being that the GPL allows anyone to enter into a contract without even consent of the other party

No, it doesn't. Voluntarily, publicly offering the GPL as license terms is consenting to others accepting that offer.

How were they able to acquire the source code? Is it based on this reporting? https://groups.google.com/g/fishcooking/c/DygaIdBvJm0/m/cjtM...

Even the makefile had a reference to stockfish.

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