In what appears to be one of the most ironic cases ever, the American Navy was charged with piracy and copyright infringement by Bitmanagement Software GmbH for making hundreds of thousands of copies of 3D modeling software without purchasing licenses.
Software company that sued US Navy awarded $154,400 theregister.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theregister.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Bitmanagement Software GmbH v. U.S. raises important
issues for any company licensing software to the U.S. government,
particularly those that utilize third-party resellers.
Under this decision, even when the government acquires a license
with express limits on the scope of the government s rights
(e.g., limiting installation to a set number of computers), the
parties conduct may give the government an implied license to
use the software beyond the scope of the express license (e.g.,
vast deployments across government networks). However, even
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The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the US Court of Federal Claims erred by failing to consider defendant’s non-compliance with the terms of an implied license, vacating the claims court’s finding of non-infringement and remanding the case for a calculation of damages.
Bitmanagement Software GmbH v. U.S., Case No. 20-1139 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 25, 2021) (O’Malley, J.) (Newman, J., concurring).
Bitmanagement Software filed suit against the US government for infringement of its copyrighted graphics-rendering software, BS Contact Geo. The claims court found that Bitmanagement had established a