Writing for the court, Justice David Souter David Souter said that "one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright…is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties".
The district court also concluded that the law does not require knowledge of "specific acts of infringement" and rejected Napster's contention that because the company cannot distinguish infringing from noninfringing files, it does not "know" of the direct infringement...
"By the time the Napster system was shut down, Bertelsmann had materially contributed to, aided and facilitated millions upon millions of separate acts of infringement by millions of Napster users," the lawsuit says.
When Cipla tried to give away some Duovir, its knockoff of Glaxo Wellcome's Combivir, in Ghana, British-based Glaxo said it would not take action against modest donations but added that it would "reserve the right to enforce our patent rights against any further acts of infringement".
Ignoring others' intellectual property may lead to acts of infringement.
It also takes into account the need to protect Brazilian consumers from acts of infringement and unfair competition.
Unlike patent law, in which the patent owner needs to prove infringement and damages in order to recover, copyright law assumes damages of up to $150,000 for willful acts of infringement.
Rather, liability shall attach only in the case of "one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, [who] is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties".
The lawsuit seeks $150,000 in damages for each act of copyright infringement that it says Bertelsmann contributed to, and sought to benefit from financially.
"While we continue in our belief that what Google did was an imperious act of copyright infringement, it is time to step off the battlefield and evaluate our losses and our gains.
The ECJ has ruled that European copyright laws, which date back to 2001 and which harmonized certain aspects of copyright and related rights for "the information society", as the European Parliament put it, do in fact protect the process of Internet browsing from being considered an act of copyright infringement in and of itself.
