parties had agreed for purposes of Chamberlain’s original motion for summary judgment that
Chamberlain did not place any restrictions on consumers regarding the type of transmitter they
had to buy to operate a Chamberlain rolling code GDO, in opposing the defendant’s motion for
summary judgment, Chamberlain submitted an affidavit of its Vice President asserting that
Chamberlain did not authorize the circumvention of its rolling code GDOs, and argued that it had
not warned consumers against using unauthorized transmitters because it had no idea that other
transmitters could be made to operate its rolling code GDOs.^1236 The court rejected these
arguments, finding that the affidavit was conclusory and entitled to little weight, and that
Chamberlain’s failure to anticipate the defendant’s technology did not “refute the fact that
homeowners have a reasonable expectation of using the technology now that it is available.”^1237
Finally, Chamberlain argued that even if its customers were authorized to circumvent its
security measures, that had no bearing on whether sellers had similar authorization. The court
found this argument ignored the fact that (1) there was a history in the GDO industry of
marketing and selling universal transmitters; (2) Chamberlain had not placed any restrictions on
the use of competing transmitters to access its rolling code GDOs; and (3) in order for the
defendant’s transmitter to activate the Chamberlain garage door, the homeowner herself had to
choose to store the defendant’s transmitter signal into the Chamberlain GDO’s memory, thereby
demonstrating the homeowner’s willingness to bypass Chamberlain’s system and its
protections.^1238
Accordingly, the court granted the defendant’s motion for partial summary judgment with
respect to Chamberlain’s DMCA claim.^1239 Since so much of the district court’s opinion
emphasized the fact that Chamberlain had not placed restrictions on the type of transmitters
customers could use to operate Chamberlain’s GDOs, one must wonder whether the court would
have ruled differently had Chamberlain made clear to customers of its GDO products at the time
of purchase that they were not authorized to use any transmitters to access the software in their
GDOs other than Chamberlain’s transmitters. If so, then under the district court’s rationale, it
seems that DMCA claims of the type Chamberlain made in this case could easily be strengthened
by copyright holders in the future by making express statements of authorization with respect to
use of their products. The Federal Circuit, in its decision on appeal, expressly declined to reach
this issue.^1240
The Federal Circuit’s Decision. On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed in a detailed
opinion that examined the legislative history and purpose of the anti-circumvention provisions of
the DMCA, and placed some significant boundaries around the scope of those provisions.^1241
(^1236) Id.
(^1237) Id.
(^1238) Id. at 1946.
(^1239) Id.
(^1240) The Federal Circuit did, however, make some statements suggesting that such restrictions might constitute
copyright misuse, as discussed below.
(^1241) The Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies, Inc., 381 F.3d 1178 (Fed. Cir. 2004) ), cert. denied, 161
L. Ed. 2d 481 (2005).