Lituania / Casos nacionales
Microsoft Corporation, Symantec Corporation and UAB VTeX v UAB Vilpostus, civil case 3K-3-311/2006
Casos nacionales. La inclusión en esta ficha no convierte una referencia extranjera en una decisión nacional. Se conserva el estado y el alcance de la fuente.
Expediente y fuentes
- Nombre
- Microsoft Corporation, Symantec Corporation and UAB VTeX v UAB Vilpostus, civil case 3K-3-311/2006
- Cita
- Microsoft Corporation, Symantec Corporation and UAB VTeX v UAB Vilpostus, civil case 3K-3-311/2006
- Tribunal
- Supreme Court of Lithuania (Lietuvos Aukščiausiasis Teismas), Civil Division
- Instancia
- última instancia
- Fechas
- Decisión
- 2006-05-03
- Estado
- resuelto-firmeza-no-verificada
- Resultado
- Cassation dismissed; the 3 November 2005 appellate ruling remained unchanged. Final and unappealable.
- Resumen
- The Court distinguished authorship from economic ownership: a program author is a natural person or group, while exclusive economic rights may vest in an employer or successor and may be enforced by a legal person. On the evidence and presumptions applied, the claimants established their rights and the unlicensed installations infringed them.
- Antecedentes
- Police inspected Vilpostus on 4 September 2002 and found 17 Microsoft program copies, six Norton AntiVirus copies and one WinLED copy installed on hard drives without end-user licences. The corporate claimants sought statutory compensation and had to establish that corporations could enforce economic rights although the statutory software author is a natural person.
- Historia procesal
- The action was filed on 23 November 2004. The Vilnius Regional Court ruled for the claimants; the Court of Appeal left that result in place on 3 November 2005. Vilpostus sought cassation.
- Cuestión jurídica
- Whether corporate software publishers had standing and sufficient chain-of-title proof where authorship belongs initially to natural persons, and whether installation without licences infringed reproduction rights.
- Criterio
- The Court distinguished authorship from economic ownership: a program author is a natural person or group, while exclusive economic rights may vest in an employer or successor and may be enforced by a legal person. On the evidence and presumptions applied, the claimants established their rights and the unlicensed installations infringed them.
- Fundamento decisivo
- ATGTĮ articles 6 and 10 identify human authorship; employee and transfer rules explain the corporation’s economic title. Authorship presumption and title evidence are analytically distinct. A legal person’s commercial ownership does not make it the human author.
- Límites
- Non-AI software infringement case. Corporate standing and economic ownership do not make a legal person the author, and the judgment does not decide authorship or originality of model outputs.
- Relevancia
- autoria-output
- Referencias relacionadas
- Peso del precedente
- Binding-orienting Supreme Court authority on the human-author/corporate-rightsholder distinction and software. It is not a GenAI-output case. Integración/votación: Česlovas Jokūbauskas (presiding), Dangutė Ambrasienė (rapporteur), Algimantas Spiečius. Three-judge panel; the published decision reports no numerical tally, concurrence or dissent. Unanimity is not inferred.
- Fuente
- Referencia
- Microsoft Corporation, Symantec Corporation and UAB VTeX v UAB Vilpostus, civil case 3K-3-311/2006
- Enlace
- Consultar fuente
- Autoridad
- Supreme Court of Lithuania (Lietuvos Aukščiausiasis Teismas), Civil Division
- Tipo
- final national civil copyright judgment; software infringement and chain of title; non-AI
- Localizador
- heading and “Ginčo esmė”; cassation analysis of ATGTĮ arts. 6 and 10 and authorship/title presumptions; operative part
- Verificación documentada
- Sí