It's not too often we get to report good news on the courtroom front, but today brings word of a remarkably sensible decision in StorageTek's case against a third-party service provider. You know, if judges continue to demonstrate this kind of logic, it's just possible that customers may retain a few basic rights in spite of the DMCA-inspired reign of terror that intellectual property rights owners have been inflicting on us all in recent years.
You might recall last year's district court decision in StorageTek's favor granting an injunction against Customer Hardware Engineering (CHE). Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its decision vacating the injunction and elucidating why StorageTek's copyright, DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and trade secret claims are unlikely to prevail if the company insists on a trial.
All of StorageTek's claims revolve around the fact that its license agreement specifically excludes the use of what it calls "maintenance code" -- an ill-defined part of the system software that loads into RAM on boot-up. As a company spokesman explained to me last year, not only does CHE therefore not have the right to make use of the system's built-in diagnostics, customers themselves aren't allowed to access it. This is turn means that StorageTek, in its view, can use the DMCA and other intellectual property to give itself a monopoly in servicing its equipment.
While the district court somehow bought into these arguments last year, today's ruling clearly saw them for what they are. StorageTek's claim that CHE's service operations are infringing "is akin to suggesting that it would be impermissible to activate a keyboard on a personal computer for the purpose of maintenance or repair because the real purpose of activating the keyboard would be to allow the user to type." It matter-of-factly dismisses the notion that violating a license agreement is itself a violation of copyright, citing many other cases that "stand for the entirely unremarkable principle that 'uses' that violate a license agreement constitute copyright infringement only when those uses would infringe in the absence of any license agreement at all." And that in turn means StorageTek's anti-circumvention argument against CHE fails "because the DMCA must be read in the context of the Copyright Act, which balances the rights of the copyright owner against the public's interest in having appropriate access to the work."
Wow, that's pretty cool. It seems so easy when the judges, or at least two of three as here, actually get what's at stake. Of course, this is just one more step in the process, and the case is now remanded for trial, which is scheduled for November. Still, this is the third major decision -- following the Chamberlain-Skylink garage door opener case and the much-deserved rebuff of the unbridled litigation efforts of Lexmark -- in which a court ruled against hardware manufacturers trying to use the DMCA to create aftermarket monopolies. At the very least, it's a hopeful trend.
StorageTek was unable to provide me with a response to the decision by close-of-business today. CHE officials told me they believe the ruling will have immediate practical benefits for their customers in that the injunction prevented the company from continuing to offer remote diagnostics of StorageTek systems. They claim that their technology was already better at spotting some potential problems before they happen than the features StorageTek's service provides.
Of course, StorageTek might dispute that point. But wouldn't it be nice if it would do so by competing in the marketplace, rather than litigating in court? Instead of throwing their money at lawyers to try to restrict the choices that their customers have, how about paying engineering and support staff to give their customers more and better choices when it comes to servicing StorageTek equipment? It might be a good idea for technology vendors of all stripes to consider, because sooner or later the courts and Congress must put an end to the DMCA's reign of intellectual property terror.
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