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From: jhummel@wave.ics.uci.edu (Joseph Edward Hummel)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Turning someone in for software piracy (UCLA vs BV Eng?)
Message-ID: <284E8736.22511@ics.uci.edu>
Date: 6 Jun 91 19:04:22 GMT
References: <9776X31w164w@spies.com> <1991Jun05.060505.115653@locus.com> <1991Jun5.181842.20626@cci632.cci.com>
Reply-To: jhummel@ics.uci.edu (Joseph Edward Hummel)
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Lines: 31
Nntp-Posting-Host: wave.ics.uci.edu

In article <1991Jun5.181842.20626@cci632.cci.com> brs@op632.UUCP (Brian Scherer) writes:
>In article <1991Jun05.060505.115653@locus.com> cjkuo@locus.com (Chengi Jimmy Kuo) writes:
>
>>This reminds me of what I think is the most ironic situation concerning
>>copyright law.
>>
>>Since copyright is a federal legal concept, a company in CA cannot sue
>>the state of CA for copyright infringement because that goes to state court!
>>(This is where the status of law stands today as backed up by precedent.)
>>So, the state school system (UCLA, etc.) is immune from copyright law with
>>respect to copying programs produced by Californian companies.
>
> I do not believe the above is correct... (sorry deleted rest of line)
>be done in a federal court, not a state one. Therefore a california
>company could sue the state of california in federal court.
>
>Brian Scherer

I'm not sure of the legal jargon, but it's a fact, a small engineering firm
(BVE?) sued UCLA for copyright infringement, and UCLA won -- on the defense
that the citizen of a state cannot sue the state (because of a federal law,
see 11th amendment).  We talked about it just the other day in our
computer law class...

We should probably move followups to some legal newsgroup?

  - joe hummel
--
Joe Hummel
ICS Graduate Student, UC Irvine
Internet: jhummel@ics.uci.edu