From the With Teeth dept.:
There are so few judicial opinions dealing with open source licenses that any single one is of great interest, but the pro-open source ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Jacobsen v. Katzer, No. 2008-1001 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 13, 2008) easily goes to the top of the charts of this small category. This is a highly significant opinion that will greatly bolster the efforts of the open source community to control the use of open source software according to the terms set out in open source licenses.

...The appeals court concluded that the Artistic License "on its face … creates conditions." The court pointed to the literal language of the license, which expressly refers to "conditions under which a Package may be copied," and the use of traditional language to create conditions, i.e., the use of the term "provided that," which creates a condition under California law.

newmedialaw.proskauer.com