All, So how do you protect code, whatever language you have written in , in business ? Without copyright, doesn't it imply , people can take you source and change it and resell it ...if the gave your source , right ?
Scott Ford Senior Systems Engineer www.identityforge.com On May 2, 2012, at 1:49 PM, Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote: >> Can one replicate the 'look and feel' without copyright issues in the EU > now? > > I might add that "look and feel" might be subject to copyright protection. > Copyright, again, protects *expression.* > > If I wrote a z/OS system monitor that cleverly displayed the status of > started tasks as bouncing balls of various sizes and colors, that expression > might be subject to copyright, but the function of displaying the status of > started tasks graphically would not. > > Charles > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf > Of Charles Mills > Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 10:16 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Programming languages can't have copyright protection, EU court > rules > > Lots of confusion here. > > 1. US and EU are of course different. Laws and precedents don't matter much > from one to the other. > > 2. Copyright in the US has never protected programming language > specifications, etc. Google Lotus v. Borland, the seminal case, which went > all the way to SCOTUS. > > 3. Copyright and Patent are way different. Copyright is trivially easy to > get and protects expression: think of poetry. Copyright protects a > particular COBOL manual and compiler source code but not the concepts and > functions of COBOL. Patents are very hard to get and protect function. This > decision has no relationship to patents (except that it reaffirms that > copyright does not protect the things that only a patent would protect). > > 4. "Intellectual Property" is the name of the kind of stuff copyrights and > patents protect. It is not a form of protection of its own. "Personal > property" is not a form of protection, but personal property is protected by > theft laws. > > Charles > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf > Of Hal Merritt > Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 10:01 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Programming languages can't have copyright protection, EU court > rules > > I'm not a lawyer and don't pretend to understand the ramifications, but this > sounds huge. > > "The result is that the court finds that ideas and principles which underlie > any element of a computer program are not protected by copyright under that > directive, only the expression of those ideas and principles." > > What does the above really mean? Can one replicate the 'look and feel' > without copyright issues in the EU now? > > In the US, there is the concept of 'intellectual property' that seems to > protect ideas from theft. Does that now mean open season in the EU? > > Or am I confusing copyright with patents? > > Granted, I currently think that the US patent system is broken, but this > seems a bit of an over kill. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
