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| | Advertising Tells the Tale - Technology Law |
 | | Grokster, Ltd., has been decided by the U. Supreme Court, not, as most commentators expected, on the question of whether or not the act of distributing file sharing technology itself is sufficient to incur liability for contributory infringement. |
| | The Court’s majority opinion, authored by Justice Souter, relied upon evidence adduced at the district court level showing that the defendant software distributors, Grokster and StreamCast, advertised their technology by publicly identifying it as an alternative to the notorious Napster music file sharing service, ultimately shut down by court order. |
| | Instead, the Court pointed to advertisements by the defendant software distributors, encouraging users of their technology to copy and exchange copyrighted works freely without permission of the copyright owners, and held that such promotional messages coupled with distribution of the technology amounts to contributory infringement. |
| www.gcglaw.com /resources/tech/grokster.html (451 words) |
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