A federal appeals court has ruled it was okay for General Electric to use computer software copyrighted by another company even though it hacked its way into the protected technology. The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by MGE UPS Systems, manufacturer of uninterruptible power supply machines used by Power Maintenance International (PMI), which GE bought in 2001. When PMI fixed its machines, it used information provided by hackers to access the MGE technology, instead of utilizing an external hardware security key called a “dongle.” Judge Emilio Garza ruled: “Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s) anti-circumvention provision.”