The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), legal guardian of the sanctity of the GPL, has sued the mighty Verizon Communications Inc on behalf of the two open source developers who wrote the Busybox utility, charging the phone company with patent infringement because it is allegedly violating the famed GPL 2 license under which Busybox is distributed.

This is now the fourth suit the SFLC has filed in the past few months in the name of these same two developers, Erik Anderson and Rob Landley, and all of them have made the same charge - that the defendant isn't providing source code as the GPL requires.

This is the first time, however, that the SFLC and its clients have taken on a household name with immense resources in defense of the GPL.

The suit says Verizon uses Busybox - or some modified species of Busybox - in the Actiontec MI424WR wireless router it distributes and has since at least since November 17, 2006 without ever supplying the source code to the firmware.

The suit, filed in federal court in New York last Thursday, demands an injunction and damages and wants Verizon to disgorge its profits. It also wants any "infringing materials" impounded.

It says Verizon was notified that it was infringing last month but "has not responded."

This is only the fourth suit of its kind ever to be filed and so far none of them have made it to court.

The very first of the suits was filed in September against an outfit called Monsoon Multimedia Inc, which almost immediately settled out of court, agreeing to pay the plaintiffs an undisclosed amount of money, get itself an open source compliance officer, publish the source code for the version of Busybox that it previously distributed on its web site and use "substantial efforts" to notify previous recipients of the code of their rights under the GPL.

That way Monsoon gets its Busybox distribution rights back, the same Busybox distribution rights that SFLC now claims Verizon has forfeit.

In late November, SFLC followed its victory over Monsoon with suits against router maker Xterasys Corporation and High-Gain Antennas LLC.

High-Gain has claimed it's distributing not Busybox code and makes the source code available to those who ask for it but SFLC won't listen.

Busybox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities. According to the Verizon suit it's used in embedded products by over 100 manufacturers worldwide including IBM, Nokia, HP and Siemens.

In Verizon's case the Actiontec router is a not insignificant product that gives Verizon a so-called FiOS platform that supports the Internet, TV and phones over its new fiber optics network.

There's a copy of the Verizon suit here.

On its web site Busybox accuses a passel of other companies of being GPL scofflaws including Tritton Technologies, Hauppauge Media, Sigma Designs and LSI Logic and says it ain't going to update it anymore, just turn the alleged offender over to the SFLC. The page says damages can run $150,000 per work plus legal fees.

See www.busybox.net/shame.html.