The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of General Universal Systems, Inc.’s (GUS) claims of copyright infringement citing GUS’s failure to produce tangible evidence to support its motion for summary judgment. General Universal Systems, Inc. v. HAL, Inc., Case No. 01-21114, (5th Cir. July 20, 2004) (Per Curium).
GUS sued HAL claiming, among other accusations, HAL infringed its copyright in a freight packaging software system. The district court dismissed GUS’s copyright claim on summary judgment. The heart of GUS’s appeal related to the issue of copyright infringement. GUS disputed the court’s dismissal of its copyright claim arguing that the Altai doctrine does not apply to source code copying and, further, the district court applied an overly restrictive test for evaluating whether the protected source code had been copied.
The Fifth Circuit noted that, in the context of a copyright infringement claim, it has generally endorsed the "abstraction-filtration-comparison" test first outlined by the Altai court. The Altai test uses a three-step procedure to assess the claim of infringement. After filtering out the non-protectable elements of the copyrighted work in the first two steps, the court then must determine, through a side-by-side comparison, whether the allegedly infringing work is substantially similar to the protectable elements of the copyrighted work.
GUS argued that Altai applies only to claims that an infringer has copied a computer’s non-literal elements, like its structure, sequence, organization and user interface. The Fifth Circuit held that the district court had only applied Altai in making a determination as to whether non-literal elements of the software had been copied. The Fifth Circuit also noted that although it had not previously expressed an opinion as to whether the Altai test should be used to evaluate claims of source code copying, that question need not be addressed in this case.
GUS also argued that the district court applied an overly restrictive test for evaluating whether protected source code had been copied. The district court had held that to prove literal copying, a plaintiff must show identical or virtually identical copying of substantial portions of a program. The district court held that, under this test, GUS failed to present evidence raising a genuine issue of material fact to defeat HAL’s motion for summary judgment of non-infringement. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit upheld the district court’s decision, explaining it could not compare the infringed and infringing work side-by-side because GUS did not produce its own source code for comparison.
The Fifth Circuit speculated that GUS’s difficulty stemmed from the muddled nature of its infringement claims. When GUS first filed its infringement suit, it alleged HAL had only copied non-literal elements of software. However, in its summary judgment motions, GUS broadened its claims asserting for the first time that HAL had directly copied the source code. The exhibits that GUS attached to the motions for summary judgment did not reflect the change in the nature of the claims, i.e., did not include a copy of the source code allegedly copied, and as a result, GUS could not meet its evidentiary burden to defeat summary judgment.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
