August 24, 2005
Fed. Circuit Smacks Down Bad DMCA Decision Re: Independent Repair Techs
http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/039297print.html
Hurray! Justice delayed ends up being justice rendered. Over a year ago,
StorageTek managed to convince a district court in Boston to misuse standard
copyright law and the DMCA anticompetitively and shut down an independent
service vendor who offered repair and maintenance on StorageTek machines.
(By doing so, StorageTek was able to leverage the vast majority of service
contracts on its library units for itself.)
Today, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed [PDF] the trial court's
order, holding that third parties can lawfully repair and maintain another
company's software under Section 117 of the Copyright Act and, more
importantly, that the DMCA cannot be used to sue such vendors when the
repair and maintanence itself doesn't violate any rights under copyright
law. The decision follows up on the Court's previous vindication of Skylink
in its DMCA case against Chamberlain over garage door openers.
Here are some of the choice quotes from the opinion:
In Chamberlain we held that when Congress enacted the DMCA, it ³chose to
create new causes of action for circumvention and for trafficking in
circumvention devices. Congress did not choose to create new property
rights.² 381 F.3d at 1203. Accordingly, we held that section 1201 ³prohibits
only forms of access that bear a reasonable relationship to the protections
that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners.² Id. at 1202. A
copyright owner alleging a violation of section 1201(a) consequently must
prove that the circumvention of the technological measure either ³infringes
or facilitates infringing a right protected by the Copyright Act.² Id. at
1203.
...
We held above that it is unlikely StorageTek will succeed on the merits
of its copyright claim. To the extent that CHE¹s activities do not
constitute copyright infringement or facilitate copyright infringement,
StorageTek is foreclosed from maintaining an action under the DMCA. See
Chamberlain, 381 F.3d at 1202. That result follows because the DMCA must be
read in the context of the Copyright Act, which balances the rights of the
copyright owner against the public¹s interest in having appropriate access
to the work. See id. at 1199 (³the severance of access from [copyright]
protection . . . would also introduce a number of irreconcilable problems in
statutory construction²); 17 U.S.C. § 1201(c)(1) (³Nothing in this section
shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defense to copyright
infringement . . . .²); see also Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City
Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 429 (1984). Therefore, courts generally have
found a violation of the DMCA only when the alleged access was intertwined
with a right protected by the Copyright Act. [citations ommited]; accord
Universal City Studios v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429, 435 (2d Cir. 2001)
(explaining that Congress enacted the DMCA to help copyright owners protect
their works from piracy). To the extent that StorageTek¹s rights under
copyright law are not at risk, the DMCA does not create a new source of
liability.
Even if StorageTek were able to prove that the automatic copying of the
software into RAM constituted copyright infringement, however, it would
still have to show that the LEM or ELEM facilitated that infringement. See
Chamberlain, 381 F.3d at 1202. If such a nexus were not required, the
careful balance that Congress sought to achieve between the ³interests of
content creators and information users² would be upset. See H.R. Rep. No.
105-551, pt. 1, at 26.
...
A court must look at the threat that the unauthorized circumvention
potentially poses in each case to determine if there is a connection between
the circumvention and a right protected by the Copyright Act.... In this
case, the threat from CHE¹s circumvention of GetKey is distinct from the
dangers that StorageTek¹s copyright protects against. See 17 U.S.C. § 106.
A good day for the public interest and for compeittion in the software
service market.
http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/2005/08/24/fed_circuit_smacks_down
_bad_dmca_decision_re_independent_repair_techs.php
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