SAN JOSE – A Santa Clara company is seeking a declaration from the court stating that it did not violate copyright laws.
Hortonworks Inc. filed a complaint for declaratory judgment on March 11 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division against e-Ventures KFT, an international company.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff acquired Hungarian open-source software company SequenceIQ and that SequenceIQ's software had been publicly available on the Internet for a year prior to the acquisition. The suit states that after the acquisition was complete, the defendant alleged that it owned the copyrights to SequenceIQ's software, accused the plaintiff of copyright infringement and sought "millions of dollars" to resolve the claim. The plaintiff alleges that the defendant has no copyright interest in the open source code.
The plaintiff seeks the following: a declaration stating that the defendant has no copyright interest in several source codes, restitution and injunctive relief, all legal fees and any other relief as this court deems just and proper. It is represented by Katherine Kelly Vidal of Fish & Richardson PC in Redwood City and Adam Kessel and Andrew Pearson of Fish & Richardson PC in Boston, Massachusetts.
U.S. District Court Northern District of California, San Jose Division Case number 5:16-cv-01235