Who has the rights to claim GPL copyright infringement of linux ??

[Peter Roozemaal]

Craig Whitmore wrote:

> A post by Henrick he said:
> 
> "Is the code in game_em/ your code or are you otherwise authorized to
> represent the author of that code?"
> 
> A question is who has the rights to claim copyright infrigement of
> someone using a device which uses a bit of hardware which runs the linux
> kernel which doesn't follow the GPL rules?
> 
> As the linux kernel includes input/code from 10000's of people can
> anyone one of them take someone else to court for copyright infrigement
> (as the hardware manufactuer using the linux kernel didn't follow the
> GPL Copyright Licence?)

Any of the Linux copyright holders whose code is used in the product has
standing to sue the distributor. Harald Welte sued some companies in
Germany as author of some of the Linux (kernel) networking code.
(A few projects ask the author to transfer copyrights to the project
organisation and in that case it is the project that has to do the suing.)

Peter.