The EFF is saying Astrolabe acted out of turn when it sued the maintainers of the Unix timezone database late last year.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking a judge to sanction the lawyers for Astrolabe, who launched a frivolous copyright lawsuit against Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert. These two researchers maintained the critical Internet timezone database, which is used by servers and PCs and phones all over the world to figure out how to correctly display timestamps and local time. The lawsuit claims that Astrolabe has a copyright on the facts of what timezone is in effect in what place, and this is plainly incorrect. US law “requires litigants to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the facts and law before filing any paper with the court,” and any such inquiry would have shown that there was no basis for a suit.

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The EFF is saying Astrolabe acted out of turn when it sued the maintainers of the Unix timezone database late last year. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking a judge to sanction the lawyers for Astrolabe, who launched a frivolous copyright lawsuit against Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert. These two researchers maintained the critical ...