Defenders of open-source software, and perhaps members of the remanufacturing industry, are concerned that the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement signed Tuesday by President Bush forces Australia to adopt U.S. intellectual property rules, including laws regarding the circumvention of copy protection and software patents covered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The DMCA was at the center of the lawsuit filed by Lexmark against Static Control Components in December 2002. In that case, Lexmark sued Static Control for one count of infringement under copyright law and two under the DMCA. Part of the allegation made by Lexmark in the lawsuit was that Static Control’s T520/620 chip technology violated the DMCA by providing access to a copyrighted work. In October 2003, the U.S. Copyright Office ruled in favor of Static Control’s position that reverse engineering of toner cartridges and chips is legal under the DMCA.
According to a CNET News story, “Australia will be required to enact laws punishing anyone who ‘circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access’ to copyrighted work or who distributes hardware or software that is designed for circumvention or is marketed that way.”
Read the entire CNET article at www.news.com. Read the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the new agreement at www.dfat.gov.au. Read President Bush’s comments prior to signing the agreement at www.whitehouse.gov.
