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<i>SCO v. IBM</i>: Does the Copyright Act Pre-empt The GPL?

Open-source software is a key e-commerce building block. For example, Apache, the world's most popular Web-server software, is open source. A lawsuit filed this year threatens not only the Linux operating system, but also the open-source license under which it is made available. This article addresses one of the legal theories attacking that license.

9 minute read November 01, 2003 at 09:27 AM
By
Thomas C. Carey
<i>SCO v. IBM</i>: Does the Copyright Act Pre-empt The GPL?

Open-source software is a key e-commerce building block. For example, Apache, the world's most popular Web-server software, is open source. A lawsuit filed this year threatens not only the Linux operating system, but also the open-source license under which it is made available.

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The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which works under the umbrella of the Librarian of Congress, sets statutory-license royalty terms and rates. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently issued two notable decisions about the CRB.

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