Wallace's Anti-GPL Suit Loses Again

Enterprise Open Source Magazine ^ | May. 19, 2006 02:30 PM | Staff

[antiRepublicrat]

IBM, Red Hat, and Novell Named in Suit that Goes Down in Flames

Daniel Wallace's second anti-GPL suit accusing IBM, Red Hat and Novell of predatory price-fixing and restraint of trade has gone down in flames like his first against the Free Software Foundation, which wrote the license.

The second decision came from a different judge in the Southern District of Indiana and, like the first judge and the FSF complaint, he found that Wallace didn't properly state a claim. He said he accepted the allegations as true but that Wallace didn't allege anticompetitive effects in an identifiable market by arguing that it stopped him from marketing his own OS and dismissed the case with prejudice figuring Wallace couldn't remedy the deficiencies.

The judge wrote that "Antitrust laws are for 'the protection of competition, not competitors.' In this case, the GPL benefits consumers by allowing for the distribution of software at no cost, other than the cost of the media on which the software is distributed. 'When the plaintiff is a poor champion of consumers, a court must be especially careful not to grant relief that may undercut the proper function of antitrust.' Because he has not identified an anticompetitive effect, Wallace has failed to allege a cognizable antitrust injury."

[antiRepublicrat]

Psycho loses again, dismissed with prejudice. He should have taken the hint that he wouldn't succeed when he couldn't find a lawyer willing to take the case.

[ShadowAce]

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