http://mmoglider.com/legal/Dec_14_2010_Opinion.pdf
The 9th Circuit ruled today on the case we're all so curious about. It's a rather long and complicated order, and it's one that will take some time to fully analyze.
From my initial unfrozen caveman lawyering I believe:
- Blizzard lost on the copyright claim, despite Vernor losing before us. I'm amazed at this, but I think it's great for the free market. The court pretty much says you can't use terms in a contract to force behavior under threat of copyright infringement. That is a huge loss for Blizzard.
- MDY lost on part of the DMCA claim regarding the "non-literal" elements of the game and Warden. The court didn't want to adopt the Federal Circuit's standard on circumvention + infringement. Ironically, we probably would have that claim if we sold out of Washington DC. Seems like something the highest court should iron out, given the differences in circuits...
- Tortious got sent back and should be a jury trial. Neither party won that one, other than our respective attorneys.
- The permanent injunction might be off for selling Glider... or it might just be for me to sell it if I wanted to without MDY Industries. It's confusing to me, but some smarter guys will figure it out. Bottom line: there's a slight chance Glider might go on sale again, but don't get your hopes up.
I'm sure there will be a lot of analysis on this from various legal blogs, so keep an eye on EFF and Public Knowledge and so forth.
As an aside, the court seemed much more sympathetic to me than the district court. They understood that Glider was not a violation of the EULA when I started selling and they took issue with Blizzard trying to use the contract as a weapon. Overall, it's pretty good - but the DMCA thing might be a loss.
What's next?
No idea. All the lawyers are gonna need time to parse this out and see what to do. Could be sit around and wait for district court, could be some way to settle, could be sell Glider again... when we start to do something, I'll post.
TL;DR
Seriously, read it.
The bolded part is absolutely great. I don't cheat, but for blizzard to win that part specifically would be absolutely terrible.
The DMCA part is an absolute shame though.
The funny thing is that after all this is over it will be basically pointless for MDY, other programs have surpassed them in features and functionality in the year+ that they have been down. Even if they did get to sell it again It wouldn't be worth using for those that want to use that type of application.