The headline implies a win, but I'm not so sure... $820K USD isn't a deterrent and to the plaintiffs, it's minus 100s of hours, distraction and legal fees which will be high given the complexity.
Les sociétés Orange versent au demeurant au débat un mail interne de la société Entr'Ouvert en date du 16 septembre 2004 s'inscrivant manifestement dans les négociations commerciales au sujet de la licence du logiciel LASSO faisant état de deux propositions, soit « une licence Lasso illimitée à 500.000€ ( à débattre :))) » ou «une licence Lasso par utilisateurs à 0,4€ (c'est la solution que je pousserai volontiers (') ». Elles versent également une autre proposition commerciale de la société Entr'Ouvert en date du 23 juin 2010 portant notamment sur une licence commerciale du logiciel LASSO dans le cadre de projets en cours de France Telecom pour lesquels un prix de 250.000€ est proposé.
That's how it works in Germany, and in principle our systems are similar enough.
In Denmark, another civil law system the highest court can give judgement in cases of principal character that should be followed in the future.
Landmark decisions ([0], [1]) set precedent. The conseil constitutionnel has ruled that its precedent is binding [2]. In fact the majority of current constitutionnal law in France was willed into "constitutionnal" status by a landmark decision of the conseil [3]. I mean precdent can move _laws_ to the _constitution_ (see [4]). That seems pretty binding and persuasive.
[0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grands_arr%C3%AAts_en_droit_ad...
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grands_arr%C3%AAts_de_la_Cour_...
[2] https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision/1962/6218L.h...
[3] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9cision_Libert%C3%A9_d%2...: essentially, the council ruled that the preamble of the constitution also had constitutional value (which was not the case previously and still is not for laws) - since it also mentions other texts (the preamble of the 1046 Constitution, the 1789 Bill of rights, etc. those texts also have the same legal power as the constitution.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_principles_recogni...
I’m not sure about the rest of you out there with companies, but for me the trend seems clear and I’m gonna be much more cautious going forward with the kind of licenses I use both as a vendor and buyer.
> The compensatory damages were based on both lost profits of the plaintiff and disgorgement of profits of Orange. Moral damages compensate the plaintiff for harm to reputation or other non-monetary injury.
Sounds like they had their profits from the breach taken away, and they also had to pay extra in "moral" damages, and also likely would have had to pay both sides' legal fees, as well as having to sink hundreds or thousands of hours into the case.
Damages for breach of IP rights (or contract) are generally calculated on the basis of well defined principles, it's not like where a regulator is handing down a fine and has a broad level of discretion to come up with whatever number it deems fair in the circumstances.
Sounds like one of those fines that most companies would just shrug off as a cost of doing business. If I were the defendant's lawyer, I think I'd be pretty successful at framing this to my client as a win.