Maybe misleading? They do say:-
'Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology, is filing the lawsuit as the purchaser of a product which has copylefted code. This approach makes it the first legal case that focuses on the rights of individual consumers as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL.
“That’s what makes this litigation unique and historic in terms of defending consumer rights,” says Karen M. Sandler, the organization’s executive director.
According to the lawsuit, a consumer of a product such as this has the right to access the source code so that it can be modified, studied, and redistributed (under the appropriate license conditions).
“We are asking the court to require Vizio to make good on its obligations under copyleft compliance requirements,” says Sandler. She explains that in past litigation, the plaintiffs have always been copyright holders of the specific GPL code. In this case, Software Freedom Conservancy hopes to demonstrate that it's not just the copyright holders, but also the receivers of the licensed code who are entitled to rights.
The lawsuit suit seeks no monetary damages, but instead seeks access to the technical information that the copyleft licenses require Vizio to provide to all customers who purchase its TVs (specifically, the plaintiff is asking for the technical information via “specific performance” rather than “damages”).'
It would seem that this is a deliberate act to test this part of the law, as elsewhere on their site is an indication that they could, and do, sue as a copyright holder:-
'In May 2012, Conservancy launched the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers, which handles compliance and enforcement activities on behalf of more than a dozen Linux copyright holders.
The GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers is comprised of copyright holders in the kernel, Linux, who have contributed to Linux under its license, the GPLv2. These copyright holders have formally asked Conservancy to engage in compliance efforts for their copyrights in the Linux kernel. In addition, some developers have directly assigned their copyrights on Linux to Conservancy, so Conservancy also enforces the GPL on Linux via its own copyrights in Linux.'
Biting the hand that feeds IT
