Intel backs Grokster in Supreme Court spat

CHIP FIRM Intel filed a document with the Supreme Court to be used on behalf of defendants Grokster, and others, as the file-sharers seek to fight a banning- order sought by major players in the US film and music industry.

Intel says that while it likes its patents to be protected by law, it feels that the Court could err if it holds companies responsible for what consumers do with their products.

In its 'Amicus Brief' filed with the court earlier this month, Intel say that its products, like others developed by technology companies, "are essentially tools that, like any tools, are capable of being used by consumers and businesses for unlawful purposes."

"Imposing on innovators, such as Intel," is says "an obligation to anticipate potential uses of their innovations, to correctly guess which uses will predominate, and then to design their technologies to prevent infringing uses (even if it were technically and practically feasible to do so) would stifle innovation and dramatically increase the cost of such technologies and of the consumer and enterprise products based on those technologies."

Such action, says the chipmaker, would, "result in timidity in innovation and would not serve the copyright law's purpose of encouraging innovation for the benefit of the public and U.S. economy."

The corporation comes down firmly in support of the decision in the Sony Betamax decision of 1984 on which many of the deliberations rest. In that ruling, the Supreme Court decided that Sony couldn't be held liable if consumers used its Betamax video recorders to tape films from the telly, since there were plenty of other legal uses to which a video recorder could be put.

The chipmakers says it "files this amicus brief to emphasize the chilling effect on innovation that would flow from adopting Petitioners' proposed radical departure from the clear holding of (the) Sony (decision)."

"The clear rule of law this Court announced in Sony has served the nation well for more than 20 years", says the statement. Intel, which, it says provides "the digital building blocks at the heart of the information economy", said it and other technology firms have, "relied on the Sony rule in developing and deploying digital technologies that, though designed for noninfringing uses, could be put to infringing uses."

The EFF has published a list of documents pertaining to the case, here.

In yesterday's opening oral arguments, the Supremes asked lawyers for the the RIAA and MPAA what impact a ruling in their favour would have on small inventors, or the "guy in the garage" as Justice David Souter put it. µ