An article over at Information Week details the court case between an open source developer and someone who violated their copyright. Check out the article.

I'm particularly impressed with the rulings reasoning, specifically:

There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties. For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge. Similarly, a programmer or company may increase its national or international reputation by incubating open source projects,

As that is exactly one of the reasons why I've released some of my products free. It is nice to see that the court system is taking on the open source legal questions and, for this ruling, seems to be siding with the intellectual property owner's rights instead of those who wish to violate those rights.

Score another one for open source!