Who is the Owner of GPL Licensed Program Output

[garrettt]

Thank you in advance for your time. I have quite a complicated scenario, so please bear with me. I'm a third party, so I may not be able to provide details on everything.

There was a programmer, call him P. He created a game and licensed it under the GPL v2. Under section 0 of the GPL, it states that program output "is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program." The output of the program that is in question is a text file of the game player's information.

P ran his game and made it available over the internet for users to enjoy. Eventually, P needed to move the game from his personal hardware to a dedicated host. One such host was used for some time until a new person came along who offered to host the game, call him H.

The program save data was created on P's computer. It then was transferred to the temporary host and then to H's computer, where it resided for many years.

P and H didn't get along very well after a while, so P left the management of the game, the game data, and the host to H and a few other trusted individuals. Eventually, the fights between P, H, and the other individuals grew out of hand.

The game data was copied from H's computer to a new host. H found out and objected to the transfer, stating that the data was his. H is threatening legal action to destroy the unauthorized copy of the data. H believes that because P became inactive and because H was the owner of the host and the administrator that the game data belongs to him and not P. P believes that the data belongs to him because he is the original author and that ownership was never transferred.

P doesn't care that H possesses a copy of the data; he just wants to be left alone. H wants P to destroy his copy so that H will be the only authorized copy.

As a player of the game, I'm stuck in the middle. As a community, we've argued about who is right and who is wrong for a long time now, and we'd like to see if there is any insight an expert can provide.

Thank you!

[flyingron]

The clause you're concerned about is targeted at things like compilers and syntax generators such as what BISON does.
However, GPL actually is exactly counter to what H is asserting anyhow. Frankly, the program output is neither covered by the GPL license nor is it work he created. He has no rights to it. Tell him to pound sand or sue you.