I am auctioning this off for the stated price to fund a legal team in DC dig into my dismissal from the company and to determine where the AWA intellectual property went after the demise of AWA.
And what is the interesting part of the auction? A backup CD full of AWA intellectual property. If someone sues him over selling that CD and infringing upon their IP, then he knows who currently owns the IP, and he can in discovery find out how they obtained it—providing the evidence needed to file his own lawsuit.
It sounds like a bit of a gamble, though: What if, say, the customer lists and the patents went to different places? Then the owners of the former could sue him, but he would not get the information he's looking for.
Unless a bankruptcy court or the receiver can terminate the license (as a contract entered into by a non-bankrupt entity). Apparently this is an issue in Germany at least; there have been some attempts to make an exception for open source licenses, but I don't believe those have been successful yet.
As I understand it (I am not a lawyer), under US bankruptcy law the same holds: IP licenses are typically "executory contracts" (there are continuing obligations on both sides) and can be either assumed or rejected (terminated) by the trustee with court approval. A licensee would be able to sue for monetary damages, but not to continue the license. It might be possible to argue that a particular free software license doesn't meet the criteria to be an executory contract, but I have no idea how likely it would be for a court to accept such an argument.
It shall not be a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with a work protected under this title if the purpose of such circumvention is to engage in a use that is not an infringement of copyright under this title.
Circumventing an access control measure was never (by itself) an "infringement of copyright": It is a separate offense created by the DMCA.
fortune: No such file or directory