Pursuant to our Principles of + Community-Oriented GPL enforcement, Software Freedom Conservancy sees + litigation as an last resort when other methods to achieve copyleft + compliance fail. Below, we discuss the outcome of past compliance + lawsuits where Conservancy played a role.
+ +On 14 December 2009, Software Freedom Conservancy filed a federal copyright +lawsuit against 14 defendants, including Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and +JVC. +The docket +of that lawsuit is available (on archive.org) and +the original complaint is on + our website.
+ +Conservancy settled with each defendant at different times, and the + dismissals can be seen in the docket. Generally speaking, and pursuant to + our Principles of + Community-Oriented GPL enforcement, Conservancy never settles a lawsuit + unless we believe that full compliance has been achieved (or will be + achieved imminently) with the terms of all copyleft licenses + on all software included in the devices at issue in any lawsuit + that we've filed.
+ +One oft-stated confusion about this litigation was that we sued Best Buy + for sales of third-party devices in their stores. That is not + accurate. Best Buy had a house-brand DVD player under the + “Insignia” “house brand” that they produced as + their own product.
+ +Conservancy partially funded and assisted in coordination of Christoph + Hellwig's lawsuit against VMware in Germany. That case concluded in 2019. + You can view the relevant announcements and analysis that Conservancy has + published about the case below, starting with the announcement regarding + the conclusion of the case:
+ ++
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