Summary: The company which bullies Red Hat using software patents makes itself an enemy of GNU, too

The case of Twin Peaks was covered in several legal sites before. Groklaw says that GPL has become central in this case, and one might say in a very familiar way. To quote Webbink, writing about his former employer: "In the following paragraph (33) Twin Peaks accepts the Court's observation about open source software, but Twin Peaks then denies any of the remaining allegations of paragraph 33 of the counterclaims. Effectively, Twin Peaks thus denies that in Jacobsen the Federal Circuit held open source licenses enforceable under copyright law. Really?

"In paragraph 38 et. seq. Twin Peaks denies sufficient information to admit that the GPLv2 places restrictions on distribution. Twin Peaks denies sufficient information to admit the very provisions of the GPLv2 that Red Hat cites. In paragraph 45 Twin Peaks denies that the program in question (util-linux and the "mount" program) are licensed under GPLv2.

"The bottom line is that Twin Peaks is going to attempt what others have attempted, i.e., to prove the GPL is either inapplicable or unenforceable. The problem Twin Peaks will face is the fact that not one, but two, separate Courts of Appeal, one of which is the Federal Circuit, have already addressed this issue as well as the issue of injunctive relief."

Cases that challenge the GPL are important for all sorts of reasons (we covered them before). They strike at the core of copyleft. So far, the GPL has always won. ⬆