SFC v. Vizio remanded back to California state courts [LWN.net]

Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has announced that it succeeded with its motion in US Federal Court to send the case back to California, where it was originally filed. The suit was filed in October 2021 by SFC, as an owner of Vizio televisions, to get the company to comply with the GPL on some of the code in the TVs. Back in November, Vizio had asked to move the case to Federal Court, because the GPL is only a copyright license (which is a dispute handled at the Federal level) and not a contract (that could be adjudicated in state court). Friday's ruling disagreed with that premise:

The May 13 ruling by the Honorable Josephine L. Staton stated that the claim from Software Freedom Conservancy succeeded in the "extra element test" and was not preempted by copyright claims, and the court finds "that the enforcement of 'an additional contractual promise separate and distinct from any rights provided by the copyright laws' amounts to an 'extra element,' and therefore, SFC's claims are not preempted."
"The ruling is a watershed moment in the history of copyleft licensing. This ruling shows that the GPL agreements function both as copyright licenses and as contractual agreements," says Karen M. Sandler, executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy. Sandler noted that many in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) legal community argue incorrectly that the GPL and other copyleft licenses only function as copyright licenses.

The LWN site is currently under high scraper load, so comment display has been suppressed for anonymous users. If you are a human, you may read the comments by clicking the button below:

Note: you can avoid this step in the future by logging into your LWN account.