A federal court in Boston issued a stipulated permanent injunction March 28 that barred two programmers from publishing software that reveals which Web sites are blocked by the CyberPatrol filtering software ( Microsystems Software Inc. v. Scandinavia Online AB, D. Mass. No. CA 00-10488-EFH, injunction issued 3/28/00).
The plaintiffs, Microsystems Software Inc. and Mattel Inc., filed the lawsuit seeking the injunction March 15. On March 20, the plaintiffs announced in court that they had acquired intellectual property rights in the software and that they would use these acquired rights to shut down Web sites around the world that are making the software’s source code and binaries available. The acquisition was part of a settlement agreement between the plaintiffs and the individual defendants, Eddy Jansson and Matthew Skala, who are foreign nationals.
