Splunk Inc. v. Cribl, Inc.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SPLUNK INC., Plaintiff, No. C 22-07611 WHA

v.

CRIBL, INC., MEMORANDUM OPINION

ON FAIR USE

Defendant.

15 INTRODUCTION This memorandum opinion explains the judge’s instruction and ruling on “fair use” under Section 107 of the Copyright Act, namely:

I instruct you that Cribl’s copying and uses of the Splunk Enterprise copyrighted software for the purpose of reverse engineering the uncopyrighted S2S protocol was fair use. I further instruct you that Cribl’s copying and uses of the Splunk Enterprise copyrighted software for the purpose of testing and troubleshooting Cribl software for interoperating with Splunk Enterprise was fair use. 22 (Dkt. No. 317 at 1). STATEMENT By way of background, the copyrighted work in this action was Splunk Enterprise, plaintiff Splunk Inc.’s flagship software product. Splunk Enterprise enables Splunk customers…