Munich Court confirms GPL Enforceability
On July 23, 2004 the District Court Munich I has delivered the reasoning to its judgement dated Mai 19, 2004, in which the court has confirmed, that the GNU General Public License (GPL) can effectively become part of an agreement und that it may be enforced before German courts. The software developer Harald Welte has obtained a preliminary injunction against a router manufacturer, that deployed GPL’ed software in its firmware, without at the same time making the source code available and without making reference as to the fact, that GPL’ed software was deployed. The District Court Munich I now confirmed that the router manufacturer may not make use of the software, unless all GPL conditions are fulfilled.
The judgement at hand is probably the first one world-wide on the effectiveness and enforceability of the GPL.