The U.S. Copyright Office recommended that cell phone owners beginning Dec. 1, 2006, can keep their handsets to use on other wireless networks when they change cellular operators, a minimum three-year ruling with huge implications for carriers and vendors.

“The underlying activity sought to be performed by the owner of the handset is to allow the handset to do what it was manufactured to do—lawfully connect to any carrier. … The purpose of the software lock appears to be limited to restricting the owner’s use of the mobile handset to support a business model, rather than to protect access to copyrighted work itself,” said Marybeth Peters, register of copyrights.

However, the mobile-phone industry said carriers may well continue to prevent handsets from working on competitors’ networks. i.e. CDMA phones wont work on other CDMA network because the hardware/software is locked to the network, or CDMA phones that do not have hardware for GSM networks. (Vice versa for GSM phones to CDMA networks.)

The copyright office declined to accept late-filed comments from CTIA and TracFone Wireless Inc., the nation’s largest independent prepaid cell phone company, in the rulemaking.

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