What kind of techniques can I legally use to discover if a produc t really is violating some (L)GPL code ?

[Peter Roozemaal]

Hallo Antoine,

I can not give you any definite advice on how much reverse engineering
is allowed in France, as I am not familiar enough with French law. A
good copyright lawyer should be able to tell you what is allowed and he
can also give you advice on how to document your findings so that they
carry most weight as evidence in court. In general it is the EULA that
restricts reverse engineering more than copyright law.

Do you own copyrights that you suspect the commercial application is
infringing upon? In that case you can file a copyright infringement
lawsuit yourself; I strongly recommend that you hire a lawyer:
- Getting an independent opinion on merits and risks of the lawsuit
- Having someone handling the administrative drudgery of the lawsuit
- Preventing you from stupid legal errors (like omitting essential
information)
If you're not a copyright owner you lack standing in the lawsuit and you
might end up doing all your work for nothing.

Peter.

Diamant-Berger, Antoine wrote:
> My name is Antoine Diamant-Berger (French, living in France, so French Law
> applies), and I follow closely a few open-source projects. 
> This post concerns one of them, which is released under the LGPL.
> 
> We have found significant naming similarities in the DLLs installed by a
> widely distributed commercial application and the dlls obtained by compiling
> an older version of the project.
> What kind of techniques may I legally use to discover if the commercial
> application really is infringing on the project ?
> What do you think our next step should be ?