Court Rules 3rd Party Garage Door Openers Don't Violate DMCA

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

...... Forwarded Message .......
From: Tim Finin <finin () cs umbc edu>
To: dave () farber net
Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 11:25:53 -0400
Subj: Court Rules 3rd Party Garage Door Openers Don't Violate DMCA

CRA's computing research policy blog (run by Peter Harsha at
http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/) has a good synopsis on
this ruling along with links to the opinion and commentary

--

Court Rules 3rd Party Garage Door Openers Don't Violate DMCA
http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/000136.html

In an affirmation of fair use rights -- at least, as long as
they don't conflict with any other rights -- a federal court
ruled yesterday that a company that makes interoperable
remotes for other companies' garage door openers isn't
violating federal copyright law. The law in question is the
troublesome Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) [link],
which among other things prohibits circumventing any
technical measure that "controls access" to a protected
work. Chamberlin, the garage door manufacturer, argued that
Skylink, the company making the interoperable remote,
violated the DMCA by reverse-engineering Chamberlin's door
opening software to create their remote.

In this case, the court appears to have ruled that Skylink's
circumvention was a legitimate fair use, and in the absence
of any "foul" use Chamberlin could not use the DMCA to
protect its product (the software contained in the remote
and the garage door opener).

However, as Seth Finklestein [link] points out, though it's
nice to see that, in some limited cases, companies won't be
able to use the DMCA for patent protection, this probably
doesn't do much to address the issues of DMCA reform and the
chilling effect the law has on computing researchers. (See
the ACM U.S. Public Policy Committee's rundown [link] on
DMCA's chilling effect and some helpful links.)

You can also find the full Skylink opinion here [link]. We've
also covered efforts to solidify fair use rights --
including the research exemption -- previously [link].


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