I must confess that, while I was still keen on the progress of the lawsuit between Amaretto Ranch Breedables and Ozimals (et al), very limited access to court documents and the relatively slow progress of the case had sent my attention largely elsewhere.
On the fifth of November, however, this little beauty turns up. Judge Charles R. Breyer is granting (in part) and rejecting (in part) a motion for summary judgement. And wow, this document itself is probably the best thing you’ll read about this case.
Summary judgements are decisions made by the court about matters of the case which none of the parties are in dispute about. These are events or evidence or other facts which all parties agree on.
That makes a a summary judgement interesting catch-up reading if you want to know who did what to whom, and how everyone got into a dispute over the remaining facts/evidence/events in the first place, all placed conveniently into the public record and public domain.
Quite a bit of this case has been opaque or vague to me, and Breyer’s judgement is a doozy of a document for getting it all straight. It is certainly the most interesting court document I’ve read this month, and it has had some stiff competition already, though I’ll remind you that while the disputed content involves Second Life, and virtual pets, this is a simple copyright dispute, like any other.
So, here we go, Breyer’s summary judgement. Enjoy.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t look like Judge Breyer is going to have all that much left to rule on to finalise this case. It may drag on a little longer, but not that much longer, I’m thinking.
Welcome back! And yeah, that one IS an interesting read. So, it looks like Breyer told them both to “lump it” .. meaning “neither of you have any standing” and both should just go back to selling their stuff and leave the other alone. Think it’ll happen?
Tateru’s in action again! \o/ YAY! \o/ Wubby!
As for the judge’s summary ruling: tl;dr
Good to see you back, Tateru.
Great find – and welcome back!
This court document is hilarious.
I like the bit written by Judge Breyer -
“he sued Ozimals (and Sargent) in Texas state court, arguing that they breached a contract with him to help write the bunny code”.
On a serious side, content creators carry very real liabilities. Your hobby in Second Life could end up costing you. Dearly.
Welcome back!
And great find; I’d forgotten about this one until reading this.
To tell the truth, I think that:
(a) Neither Ozimals nor Amaretto have a case.
(b) Breedables should never have been allowed in the first place; they’re a prime source of lag, as each breedable is hogging the server down with a gazillion scripts that take up ridiculous amounts of server RAM and time.
(c) The whole breedables thing is too reminiscent of Ponzi schemes.
[...] Amaretto vs. Ozmails – A copyright infringement case erupts between two breedable manufacturers based essentially on similarities in [...]
Two years ago (just before I left SL), I was following this care pretty closely, even did some interviews. Unfortunately IRL intervened and I left SL around that time.
Today I put up the court documents I collected here (adding this recent judgement):
http://ge.tt/4Kd5wCV/v/0
I didn’t find the judge’s explanation very lucid at all. My questions:
* Did Amaretto game objects use the actual game code ripped from Ozimals objects?
* Is this judgement saying that is OK because one of the Ozimal programmers was disputing with the Ozimal owners?
Those are the key unanswered questions to me.