In Davidson & Associates v. Jung, 422 F.3d 630 (8th Cir. 2005), the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld a clickwrap agreement that prohibited reverse engineering. In that case, the clickwrap agreement that had to be accepted prior to playing the online game prohibited reverse engineering.
The clickwrap agreement was included in the End User License Agreement that each user had to affirmatively agree to (by clicking on “I Agree” button) when installing the game, and you could not play the game without agreeing. Users also had to enter a CD Key which was included on the copy of the CD the game came on. The CD Key was connected to the CPU’s IP address to prohibit pirating and copying of the CDs.
Certain users, unhappy with the games’ performance and the system used to play the online game, reverse engineered the game and created their own site to play it against others on the game maker’s site. Blizzard, the game maker sued.
The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the clickwrap agreement provision that prohibited reverse engineering, stating that the users had expressly relinquished their right to reverse engineer by agreeing to the terms of the license agreement.
There were various other copyright claims, and the court also held that the users violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which seemingly made ruling against the users easier.