Picture: Karen Arnold / Public Domain Pictures / CC0
It’s a long battle that Petit Poucet Entr’Ouvert has just won against Orange, the new technology law news site Legalis reported this Friday. In the full judgment, delivered on Valentine’s Day, it is specified that “the company Entr’Ouvert is a cooperative production company owned by its nineteen employees, created on September 2, 2002 whose activity is the IT service and in particular the creation of software, advice, expertise and training.
A librist cooperative against Orange
On its site, Entr’Ouvert indicates: “Entr’ouvert has an intimate knowledge of Free Software communities and their modes of operation. Preserving and promoting the Free Software ecosystem is one of the structure’s objectives. Several cooperators are engaged in free projects which are not linked to the economic activities of Entr’ouvert (the April association, the GNOME project, OpenStreetMap, etc.).
We are present in Paris, Marseille, Dunkirk, Lyon and Dordogne, as well as Brussels. Although we are a small company, with the flexibility that this implies, we are nevertheless used to working with major accounts (administrative and business) such as Ministries (Interior, Culture, Solidarity), the Walloon Parliament, the Montpellier Metropolis , Departmental Councils, Cisco… The majority of our clients are local authorities, of all sizes, with a predominance of large cities (Grand Lyon, Toulouse, Nancy, Orléans, Strasbourg and many others).”
The libertarian activist Laurent Séguin, who died in 2020, worked within Entr’Ouvert.
Economic harm
In its summary of the case law which has just been published, Legalis explains: “By a judgment of February 14, 2024, the Court of Appeal condemned Orange for infringement for not having respected the terms of the GNU GPL v2 license. Orange must pay Entr’Ouvert 500,000 euros in compensation for the negative economic consequences suffered and 150,000 euros for moral damage. The court considers that Entr’Ouvert first suffered economic damage linked to the loss of earnings on the public market Mon.service-public.fr “since if the Orange companies had respected the license contract and concluded a paid license, They should have paid him a royalty.” Furthermore, the court notes that the free exploitation of the Lasso software by Orange necessarily generated profits for this large-scale public market which lasted for 7 years (…).”
Three violations of the GNU GPL license
At the beginning of the story, in 2005, there was a call for tenders for the supply of an IT solution for identity management, as part of the establishment of the My Public Service portal. Orange had proposed a solution including the interfacing of an IDMP platform with the Lasso software library published by Entr’ouvert, under GPL. But Entr’Ouvert “reproached Orange in particular for violating the clauses of the license contract for the Lasso program, relating to its intellectual property rights as the claimed holder of copyright on this program and therefore sued Orange on the basis of the alleged infringement of its rights,” indicates Legalis.
Entr’Ouvert, indicates the judgment, had Orange summoned in April 2011 before the Paris High Court for copyright infringement and parasitism. The court of appeal was convinced by the elements provided by Entr’Ouvert of the originality of the Lasso software, and consequently examined the violations of the GNU GPL v2 license contract that Entr’Ouvert invokes. Full card, for the three violations invoked:
– IDMP should have been granted to the State as something free,
– the modified source code should have been communicated,
– and Orange copied, modified and distributed Lasso without respecting all the conditions of the license.
Entr’Ouvert had to fight for a long time to obtain justice, since this final victory comes, underlines Legalis, “after a judgment of the Court of Cassation of October 5, 2022 which overturned and annulled the decision of the Court of Appeal of March 19, 2021 This had declared Entr’Ouvert inadmissible to act for software counterfeiting (…)”.
Excerpt from the comment by Frédéric Couchet, general delegate of April, on Mastodon: “Winning against such a structure is beautiful. And shame on Orange for having forced Entr’ouvert to take so many steps to enforce the rules of the game and their legitimate rights.”
Read also
Results: Orange in line with its objectives but struggling in France – February 15, 2024
Violation of the GPL license: 14 high tech companies prosecuted – December 15, 2009
Non-compliance with the GNU GPL license sanctioned by the Court of Appeal – September 22, 2009