Volume I

Issue : 10: November 13, 2003

• B.C. Court of Appeal Takes Note of Special Nature of an IT Business in Recent Decision
• Internet Browser Patent Re examination Ordered
• Time Warner to Enter the VoIP Market in California Bangladesh to Open VoIP to Private Sector
• CDT Releases Report on Spyware
• FTC Holiday Warning to E tailers
• B.C. Supreme Court has Jurisdiction Over Domain Name Dispute
• U.S. Court of Appeals Reverses FBI Eavesdropping Orders
• Pharma Companys Use of Cookies Found Not in of Violation of Privacy Legislation
• Manufacture of Garage Door Openers Uses DCMA to Fight Competitor
• Music Industry Establishes One-Stop International Licence for Webcasters
• Movie Industry Set to Sue Individual File Sharers in War Against Piracy
• Report Finds Identity Theft on the Rise in Canada
• Bank Managers Disclosure Of Private Information Leads To Cancelled Wedding

Home > Volume I > Issue 10: November 13, 2003 > Manufacture of Garage Door Openers Uses DCMA to Fight Competitor

Manufacture of Garage Door Openers Uses DCMA to Fight Competitor

Since its passing by the U.S. Congress in 1998, opponents of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), which prohibits the circumvention of technological measures used by copyright owners to protect digital content, have criticized the legislation as poorly drafted and overly protective of the rights of copyright owners. More recently, companies such as Lexmark (a maker of printers and printer cartridges) and Chamberlain Group (a maker of home security products) have used the DMCA to sue competitors who market interoperable products on the grounds that such products are illegal circumvention devices under the DCMA.

In The Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies, Inc., an Illinois federal court has ruled in a motion for summary judgment that a universal remote transmitter for opening garage doors is not in violation of the DMCA. The plaintiff Chamberlain argued that Skylink's universal remote transmitter unlawfully circumvented a technological measure incorporated within a computer program in Chamberlain's garage door opener.

Under the DMCA, circumvention of a technological measure (whether by means of avoidance, bypass, removal, deactivation or impairment) must be "without the consent of the copyright owner" in order to be illegal. Since it was the individual consumer that stored the code for Skylink's universal remote transmitter in the memory of Chamberlain's garage door opener, the case turned on the fact that Chamberlain had not specifically prohibited consumers from using the interoperable products of a competitor with Chamberlain's garage door opener. Critics of the DCMA are not appeased, as the ruling effectively sidestepped the larger, more contentious issue of whether the legislation could be used to 'stifle competition' by prohibiting the use of interoperable products that circumvent technological measures incorporated within a rival's product.

For a copy of the decision, visit:

http://shorl.com/gudohypobeky