[news.sysadmin] Lawsuits and the virus

meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner) (11/13/88)

It occurs to me that if a class action suit is filed against Morris,
it may backfire big time.  As somebody else mentioned, in class action
suits, institutions with "deep pockets" (ie, multimillion dollar
companies, large universities, governments, etc.) are brought in as
co-defendents, even if their share of the guilt is small.

Given the sources came from AT&T and the University of California at
Berkeley, they would be named as co-defendents in the suit.  I seem to
recall that in the infamous Berkeley license agreement, there is a
clause that if Berkeley is ever sued, companies who license the Berkeley
software are also made co-defendents.  I would imagine there is probably
similar wording in AT&T's contracts.  Think about it for a bit....

Disclaimer:  It's been quite a bit of time since I've seen license
agreements, and I'm not a lawyer.
-- 
Michael Meissner, Data General.

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