Go re-read the decision. The decision said nothing about the actual SAS code. It said that the documented interfaces including the language could not be copyrighted.
The code and the documentation can be copyrighted and protected. Lloyd ----- Original Message ---- From: Scott Ford <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, May 2, 2012 10:33:56 PM Subject: Re: Programming languages can't have copyright protection, EU court rules 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
