Preliminary Injunction to enforce netfilter/iptables GPL

[Harald Welte]

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
---------------------

Of interest to editors and journalists covering:=20
Linux, Free Software, Open Source, Copyright Law

MUNICH COURT GRANTS PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION FOR INFRINGING USE OF GPL=20
LICENSED SOFTWARE

BERLIN, Germany - Apr. 14, 2004 -- The Munich district court granted
a preliminary injuction against Sitecom Germany GmbH
(http://www.sitecom.com/). This injunctive relieve has been applied by
the netfilter/iptables project (http://www.netfilter.org/).

Sitecom is offering a wireless access router product (WL-122) based on
software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), developed
by the netfilter/iptables project.

The GNU GPL is a license commonly used for many free software projects,
such as the Linux Operating System Kernel.  The GPL licenses software
free of cost, but requires any redistributor to provide the full source
code.

According to the court order, Sitecom did not fulfill the obligations
imposed by the GNU General Public License covering the
netfilter/iptables software. In particular, Sitecom did not make any
source code offering or include the GPL license terms with their
products.

Following a warning notice, Sitecom refused to sign a declaration to
cease and desist. Thus, the netfilter/iptables project was compelled to
ask the court for a preliminnary injuction, banning Sitecom from
distributing its product, unless Sitecom complies with all obligations
imposed by the GNU GPL.

"To my knowledge, this is the first case in which a judicial decision
 has been decreed on the applicability and the validity of the GNU GPL",
says Dr. Till Jaeger, partner of the Berlin and Munich based law firm
JBB Rechtsanwaelte (http://www.jbb.de/) that represented the
netfilter/iptables project in the litigation.

This preliminary injunction follows a series of out-of-court settlement
agreements that the netfilter/iptables project has concluded within a
short period of time. When asked about the reasons for the sudden rise
in legal pressure for GPL compliance, Harald Welte, Chairman of the
Netfilter Core Team states:

"We are not in any way opposing the commercial use of free and open source
 software. Specifically, there is no legal risk of using GPL licensed
 software in commercial products.  But vendors have to comply with the lice=
nse
 terms, just like they would have to with any other, even proprietary softw=
are
 license agreement."


About the netfilter/iptables project

The netfilter/iptables project provides state-of-the-art network
security software for Linux firewalling, packet filter and network
address translation (NAT), distributed as Free Software under the terms
of the GNU General Public License.  Being part of the linux operating
system kernel, the software is running on virtually every Linux installatio=
n.

For more information on the project or the software, visit
http://www.netfilter.org/


Media contact:
netfilter core team
Harald Welte
Phone: +49-30-24033902
Email: laforge@netfilter.org
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- Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>             http://www.netfilter.org/
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
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=3D
  "Fragmentation is like classful addressing -- an interesting early
   architectural error that shows how much experimentation was going
   on while IP was being designed."                    -- Paul Vixie

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