EU Commission -- Major Supporter Of ACTA -- Gets Dinged 12 Million Euros For Infringing On Copyright

from the all-in-the-enforcement dept

The EU Commission has been a major supporter of ACTA from start to finish, even pushing to expand it beyond what the US had hoped for ACTA to cover. So it's a bit amusing to find out that the EU Commission has lost a copyright infringement lawsuit and now has to pay out €12 million. The case itself is a bit ridiculous. Basically, the Commission had used some translation software from Systran. But then, the EC decided to find a new partner, and Systran went legal:

On 4 October 2003 the Commission published a call for tenders for the maintenance and linguistic enhancement of its machine translation system. The services required by the Commission from the successful contractor concerned, inter alia, 'enhancements, adaptations and additions to linguistic routines'; 'specific improvements to analysis, transfer and synthesis programs' and 'system updates', as covered by the call for tenders.

Following that call for tenders, Systran... contacted the Commission to inform it that the planned work appeared likely to infringe its intellectual property rights.

Some of the dispute was over what part of the code was actually the Commission's and which was Systran's (which sounds like the Commission needs better lawyers in negotiating software deals). In the end, the EU Commission lost the resulting lawsuit, and now needs to pay up:

Consequently, by granting the right to carry out work which necessarily entailed an alteration of elements of the Systran Unix version of the Systran software which are within the EC-Systran Unix version, without first obtaining the consent of the Systran group, the Commission acted unlawfully by infringing the general principles common to the law of the Member States applicable to copyright and know-how. That wrongful act, which is a sufficiently serious breach of the copyright and know-how held by the Systran group in the Systran Unix version of the Systran software, gives rise to non-contractual liability on the part of the European Union.

The General Court rules that liquidated damages and interest amounting to €12,001,000 must be paid to Systran to compensate it for the damage suffered as a result of the Commission's unlawful conduct

Why is it always the biggest proponents of greater copyright that get caught infringing on copryights? (Thanks to Igor Mozolevsky for sending this in.)

Filed Under: copyright, eu commission, infringement
Companies: systran