High Court Refuses to Hear Garage Door-Opener Case

A company that makes automated garage door opener systems has failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to review a ruling that rejected its Digital Millennium Copyright Act claims against a competitor.

Plaintiff Chamberlain Group Inc. manufactures garage door openers, including a system called Security+ that operates by changing the transmitted signal each time the user opens or closes the garage door with the remote control. As Chamberlain explained in court filings, most openers use a code that differs from unit to unit but remains constant for a particular unit.

Chamberlain claims its "rolling code" system affords protection against "code grabbers" who can intercept normal opener signals and play them back later to gain unauthorized access to garages.

Chamberlain filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Skylink Technologies Inc. Skylink's Model 39 universal transmitter can operate many different brands of garage door openers, including Chamberlain's Security+ system.

The suit claimed, among other things, that the Model 39 violates the DMCA, which prohibits the circumvention of any "technological protection measure" that protects access to a copyrighted work.

According to Chamberlain, the Model 39 circumvents the rolling-code system, which is designed to protect access to the computer program in the opener's receiver that actually triggers the opening and closing of the garage door.

The District Court granted Skylink's motion for summary judgment on the DMCA claim, finding that customers who purchased Chamberlain's openers had implicit authorization to use any opener they wanted, including Skylink's Model 39, to operate their systems.

Therefore, the court said, Chamberlain could not prove that Skylink circumvented a technological protection measure in order to gain unauthorized access to Chamberlain's rolling-code software.

Chamberlain appealed to the Federal Circuit, which affirmed.

Chamberlain argued on appeal that the DMCA overrode all pre-existing consumer expectations about uses of products containing embedded software, such as the garage door openers in this case. Now, Chamberlain argued, consumers cannot use such products in conjunction with a competitor's product unless the owner of the copyright in the embedded software gives customers explicit authorization to do so.

The panel said that argument goes far beyond what Congress said in the text of the DMCA.

Under Chamberlain's interpretation, product manufacturers could add tiny amounts of copyrighted software code to a product, protect it with encryption and gain the right to restrict consumers' use of the product in conjunction with competing products, the panel said.

In its petition to the high court, Chamberlain argued that Supreme Court review is necessary to resolve a circuit split.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's interpretation of the DMCA is directly conflicts with that of the 2d Circuit and is inconsistent with a 6th Circuit ruling, Chamberlain argued.

In Universal City Studios Inc. v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001), Chamberlain argued, the 2d Circuit rejected the argument that traffickers in circumvention technology can get around the DMCA by relying on the end user's authority to use protected content. That case involved defendants who distributed DVD decryption technology and argued that they should not be held liable under the DMCA because individuals who buy DVDs have the right to view them.

The Federal Circuit's decision is also inconsistent with the ruling in Lexmark International Inc. v. Static Control Components Inc., 387 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2004), in which the 6th Circuit said the DMCA did not apply because the plaintiff's product — toner cartridges for printers — lacked "effective" access control measures. Chamberlain said it would have prevailed under the 6th Circuit's construction of the DMCA.

Skylink did not file a brief in opposition to Chamberlain's petition.