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Your source is wrong.

2. California does have a trade secrets exception; you need to read Muggill v. Reuben H. Donnelley Corp -- Edwards v. Arthur Andersen expressly refused to eliminate that exception.

Are you a complete idiot? Not one of your references supports your point. Not one of them supports the idea that there is a trade secret exception to the voiding of non-compete agreements. For example, let's look at the outcome of Muggill v. Reuben H. Donnelley Corp. What did the Supreme Court of California decide: "The judgment is reversed.". This was a reversal of an adverse judgment under which the plaintiff lost his pension due to a non-compete agreement. In other words, the Supreme Court agreed that the non-compete was void.

As for E Edwards v. Arthur Andersen: " We conclude that Andersen's noncompetition agreement was invalid."

Here is another page that shows you are wrong:

In addition, even where trade secrets are potentially at risk, California has refused to prevent a party from accepting employment with a competitor simply because there is a claim that disclosure of the former employerâ(TM)s trade secrets is âoeinevitable.â There must be actual or threatened disclosure. Read âoeInevitable Disclosure of Trade Secrets.â

....

If California law applies to a given transaction, it appears that virtually any form of non-compete provisions (other than those expressly set forth in the statute) are likely to be unenforceable. And this likely applies as well even when there is the possibility, but not actual disclosure of, trade secrets.

I don't know why you think that. Characters can be copyrighted, for explanation see here or here

Now, the interesting question would be, as a trademark, can Mickey Mouse be used under fair use?

I would think it'd depend on the precise way the cartoon is used. I would expect that if you posted the early MM movies on your website, under a disclaimer saying that these were produced by Disney and are now out of copyright, that you would be ok. However, if you posted them in a way that made users think your website was Disney approved, then you would be in trouble.

This site is really good IMHO, (and also check out the section on fair use of trademarks):

if the mark is being used by another party in such a manner that potential consumers are likely to believe that such use is endorsed by or is otherwise associated with the mark’s owner, then the mark’s owner may have rights to prevent such use and to seek damages and other remedies for the same.

That page makes clear that trademark rights are not as strong as copyright rights, and they are harder to get. You don't get a trademark just by creating a character.

My point is that any time you create an original work using someone else's characters, you've already met 3 of the 4 criteria above,

Nah, it's still not necessarily transformative. This link discusses the distinction. Also, notice the distinction between satire and parody.

In the article, the words "characters themselves can be protected by copyright" are linked to this page, which is written by a lawyer:
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/cha...
Ergo, thank you for calling my post interesting.

Other artists would be able to use Bond or Mouse in their own works without the consent of, or payment to Ian Fleming Publications or Disney Corporation.

Wrong. Even if Mickey Mouse cartoons and James Bond books enter the public domain, use of their character name to create new fiction is illegal because of trademark laws. Remember, trademarks are for an infinite duration of time.

Here's some info about trademarks for fictional characters.
Relevant quote:

Rights to characters may exist under federal trademark law as well as under state laws dealing with unfair competition and passing off. The key to federal trademark protection is that marks are protectable only to the extent that they are used to identify the source of certain products and/or services. Thus it is not merely having a description or depiction of a character, whether in text or graphic format, that matters. Instead, trademark rights depend upon having a character that is used in relationship to specific goods and/or services and which character is then deemed to be a âoesource identifier.â The latter term means that the character is considered in the minds of the public as identifying a particular source of the goods and/or services.

Before such rights of trademark in characters can be found to exist, the law requires that the character must have developed what the law refers to as a âoesecondary meaning.â This refers to the legal doctrine that when a consumer sees the particular character, it associates it with a particular source. Of course the best example would be Mickey Mouse. Everyone on the planet knows that that character stems from a particular sourceâ¦Disney. To the same extent would be Bugs Bunny, the source being Warner Bros. This secondary meaning then allows the consumer to know that when he or she sees or relates to that character, that the particular source is behind it, either directly or through some quality-controlled licensing arrangement.

Assassination may be a possibility in some circles - it's actually not bad with patents - they expire after 20 years. Copyright 120 years or life of author + 70 years - mostly, that's a long time.. pretty complicated...

from: http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html: "Under the current law, if a work was first published in the United States on or before December 31, 1922, then it is likely to be in the public domain."

Hobbit apparently 1936
Lord of the Rings 1954/55
T. died 73 + 70 = 2043

Actually characters are copyrightable under certain circumstances.

As indicated above, a character can exist merely by its textual description of that character. Who he or she is, what he or she looks like, the manner of behavior and other such characteristics can all be described, in writing, by the author. As such, the character may be protected under copyright law as part of the text of that work (see discussion below). Since one of the rights of copyright is the right to make derivative works based on the work, if there is such protection, the author (or whoever is the proprietor of the rights in and to the text including the character) retains the right to make further use of that character in such derivative works.

                However, the character as described textually has to be protectable by copyright, meaning that it must have sufficient originality to satisfy the requirements of the statute. If the character as described is merely a "stock" character, there may not be sufficient originality to make the character protectable.

http://www.ivanhoffman.com/characters.html

The character has to have some depth (not stock soldier number 3 etc)
but characters are very much copyrightable as are fictional worlds.
If you don't think the fictional worlds are then try commercially publishing a book based in the Star Trek or Star Wars universe and see how long it takes to get sued.

Fanfic sometimes simply gets ignored because many authors started out themselves writing fan fiction and they don't want to stop it.
Some authors hate it with a passion.

The rules of a game cannot be copied.

You can make a game where a character goes around eating dots and being chased by ghosts which is identical to packman in every way as long as your character doesn't look too much like the origional though it might depend on whether the pacman character is significant enough to fall under copyright given that it's simply a circle with a wedge cut out.

but if you closely copy the art(like drawing the character yourself but making it almost identical), characters, story or world(assuming it's significant enough to be covered by copyright and I'd guess that the simple maze in pacman probably wouldn't be enough) then you can fall foul of copyright.
And as for names avoid anything that is too close to the origional or contains part of the origionals name.

You cannot copyright a game, but you are allowed to patent the rules?

Correct. If you want exclusive rights to functionality, a patent is the way to go. Nintendo has a U.S. patent on the rules of Dr. Mario and Tetris 2; Konami has one on Dance Dance Revolution. The Tetris Company has had trouble shutting down developers of Tetris clones such as Gnometris and LTris because Elorg never sought a patent on the game, only a copyright on the game program and those audiovisual elements not dictated by functionality.

What's preventing others from scanning those same books again? Yes, it's a pain in the butt, but that's exactly why Google should be allowed to ask for whatever the market is willing to bear.

The only problem I can see if various ideas for the copyright protection of databases come to pass. Then Google could indeed have a perpetual monopoly for their list of orphaned copies.

It's my understanding that if you quote an insignificant piece, that's simply a quote. If you quote the whole work, then it's infringement.

IANAL, but I don't believe your understanding is correct. The important factor is not what percentage you quote, but your intent and purpose in doing so. Larger sections (up to and including all) are harder to justify, but quoting a whole work could be justified in an academic context.

There's also the issue of things like merger and scènes à faire .

Under the merger doctrine, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the idea underlying the work can be expressed only in one way, lest there be a monopoly on the underlying idea...

Under the related doctrine of scenes a faire, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the expression embodied in the work necessarily flows from a commonplace idea...

This is all going to be particularly relevant in the case of something like Twitter. As the court observed in the famous Apple vs. Microsoft "look and feel" suits, "[w]hen the range of protectable expression is narrow, the appropriate standard for illicit copying is virtual identity." So "insignificant piece", as you suggested, is not going to be the limiting factor here.

Probably.

Of course, if the person whose twitter posts you're quoting is particularly litigious, it may be expensive to prove you're in the right, even when you are.

Before you make any moves, you're going to first want to gather together your employment contracts and take them to a lawyer along with a description of what you want to do. Non-compete clauses are one concern, but some are not enforceable since they would prevent a person from earning a living. Even without a non-compete clause, you could be hit with a lawsuit based on the inevitable disclosure doctrine, where a company can argue that their trade secrets would inevitably be compromised by the new employment. Finally, there could be wording in the contract that says that anything developed while you work for them belongs to them. If that's a concern, you need to make sure that any serious work on the new project doesn't start until after you terminate the old. A lawyer can help you deal with these issues in such a way as to keep your new company from being shut down.

Once you know what your options are, you need to make a plan. Who is going to be available? What's your new target market? When will your product be available? When will it be profitable? And how are you going to live in the meantime? You're going to want answers to all those questions before you make any moves you can't take back.

Good luck.

There's probably going to be someone who interprets that as including NDAs instead of just "non-compete" clauses.

The doctrine connecting non-disclosure agreements to covenants not to compete is called inevitable disclosure.

The Court cited McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition, a well respected legal treatise that says: The first principle of unfair competition law is that everything that is not protected by an intellectual property right is free to copy. In fact, copying is an essential part of the whole fabric of an economic system of free competition. Thus, the act of "copying," far from being intrinsically improper, is essential and should be lauded and encouraged, not condemned. There is absolutely nothing legally or morally reprehensible about exact copying of things in the public domain.

The first principle of unfair competition law is that everything that is not protected by an intellectual property right is free to copy. In fact, copying is an essential part of the whole fabric of an economic system of free competition. Thus, the act of "copying," far from being intrinsically improper, is essential and should be lauded and encouraged, not condemned. There is absolutely nothing legally or morally reprehensible about exact copying of things in the public domain.

The Court stated further:

. Other circuits that have likewise found that a presumption of intent to confuse arises when evidence of copying is presented recognize that if there is no real issue of a likelihood of confusion, evidence of copying is of no import. Id. (citations omitted). "We have recognized that evidence of intentional copying raises a presumption that a second comer intended to create a confusing similarity of appearance and succeeded. But if comparison of the works reveals no fair jury issue concerning likelihood of confusion, then intent to copy, even if found from the proffered evidence, would not establish a Lanham Act violation."

But, pushing aging reactors past their design capacity or refueling faster with fewer people seem like lessons learned just waiting to happen.

That's just capitalism at work. They're trying to extract the greatest value for the least amount of input. Funnily enough, we end up with the same situation as witnessed in a certain communist regime a couple of decades ago: unsafe nuclear powerplants are pushed past their limits by untrained and inexperienced staff.

Another anti capitalist diatribe? This is in no way capitalistic, under true capitalism the business owning and or operating this plant would be held accountable. This company was not. It's amazing so many /.ers are anti capitalists, if it weren't for capitalism there wouldn't be any /., no internet, no computers. Actually these don't exist because of pure capitalism either, but more because of the desire for freedom.

"One of the reasons that capitalism is hard is because there is no one and nothing to blame for the failure of any given individual...except the individual. Blame of the other, in most instances, is incompatible with capitalism. Like democracy and freedom, capitalism requires self-reliance, respect for one's self including a recognition of one's value in a given instance (read "Leverage in Contract and Other Negotiations") and, perhaps most significantly, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for one's successes or failures. Indeed, what I have seen is that those who in fact are self-reliant, self-confident and who know their worth are often disparaged for those same qualities."

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be putting up with, but here's a random sample of attorneys who appear to focus on the sort of hypo you presented. It took me ten minutes to find these via Google:

• one
• two
• three
• four

I'm not sure where you got the $5k retainer figure. Have you actually had that experience? You've tried to get legal help and no lawyers would help you without a $5k retainer?

I have to take issue with your comment about the characteristics of lawyers in general. You're making an incredibly broad generalization that covers a huge swath of territory, encompassing everyone from transactional attorneys who work for the county government, to public defenders, to the lawyers who work at the EFF, to cutthroat IP litigators. Saying "the characteristics of lawyers in general" is like saying "the characteristics of programmers in general." It's an unsupportable statement.

In your post you seem to have mis-typed a link. You gave the link http://www.ivanhoffman.com/nightmare.html , which seems to be a page of utter pro-lawyer marketing, trying to scare people into paying big legal bills with the threat of even bigger legal fees.

Perhaps you meant to type a reference to a more reasonable piece of advice, such as a Nolo publication ?

"we may say that copying that is complementary to the copyrighted work ... is fair use, but copying that is a substitute for the copyrighted work ... is not fair use. ... A photograph of a Beanie Baby is not a substitute for a Beanie Baby."

It's clearly impossible for any book to replace the WoW gameplay experience. Hence, Blizzard had ample reason to know that their takedown notices were completely invalid and subjected them to the penalties under section 512(f) of the DMCA for sending false notices.

He would be right, because it is not covered by fair use. The courts have taken a very dim view of sampling without first getting permission of the original rights holder, and there are a number of cases to this effect.

In particular I'm thinking about Bridgeport Music vs. Dimension Films, where the sampled content was less than a second or two. Here's a fairly good summary summary that I found via Google.

Obviously there are additional issues when you are profiting off of the work versus just using it yourself, but that just makes your liability for damages less, it doesn't make it legal.

I'm no fan of DRM, but it's a bit rich to complain about what happened, since it was almost certainly illegal in the first place. The possibly noninfringing use (using it in his own composition, on his own computer) was allowed, but the system stopped him from sharing it with a number of other people; the assumption by the computer and the system's designers that any sharing represents a public performance is not surprising, since once a file is shared digitally, there is no end to how far it can be shared subsequently. This could be stopped with some form of universal DRM that prevented second-generation sharing, but personally I find this "cure" worse than the "disease" represented by current limitations.

It's already been established that a collectors' guide can contain images and titles of every image in a set of copyrighted works. Specifically, Beanie Babies in the case Ty, Inc., vs. Publications International, Ltd.. The fair use arguments in that case are particularly interesting, since they cover the requirement for a collector's guide to be complete to be successful and the transformative nature of the use, both of which would apply to the use of baseball statistics in fantasy games.

Flat fees range from $100 to over $10,000, while royalties to recording owners range between half a cent and three cents for every copy of the track sold. Musical composition licenses typically give "the copyright holder a percentage ownership in the new work's musical composition copyright," as well as an advance of a few thousand dollars on the expected publishing income.

No, it's not a simplified DIY copyright kit. Creative Commons is about simplified licensing of copyrighted works. One of the hardest things about getting permission to use someone else's copyrighted work (and Dvorak's arguments about fair use should be read in light of Ivan Hoffman's fair use article and the realization that "fair use" varies greatly from legal jurisdiction to legal jurisdiction) is actually tracking down the owner of the approriate rights in order to ask them for permission.

Don't believe me? Check out the copyright clearance section of Project Gutenberg. Who has control over which rights is not always clear, nor is it clear how to contact them. A Creative Commons or similar license removes the need (under appropriate conditions) for explicitly obtaining permission from the rights holder.

Now, it's true that the early CC site wasn't very clear as to the purpose and use of the CC licenses. But not anymore.

holiday inn sued and lost

the agency never advertised as "1-800-h0liday" they just happened to have this certain # with a zero in it.-so it was not infringing on a trademark... kinda harder to do with URLS..

more of the same here
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/1800.html

That is entirely asinine, and incorrect.

Then do you think the "post-apocalyptic" story where debuggers are only available for use by licensed individuals and are heavily regulated is "asinine and incorrect"?

create any free DVD I want

Oh sure, you can create a DVD for free, but there is still no widely available legal way to play them on Linux (Intervideo is holding out on LinDVD for whatever reason, and after making waves with a working product years ago and having a page announcing that they would be selling it as an OEM linux product with a standalone product in the works, now appears to have completely expunged it from their site. Insert DVD-CCA brand tinfoil here). If you want to make your movie available to the masses without any kind of expenditure required (legally) on their part, you're looking in the wrong place. Stick to ogg (while mp3 is patent encumbered) for your music, and mpeg1 (which I'm assuming isn't encumbered) for your video.

The DMCA does not force creators to encrypt their works.

It may not right this second, but we'll see what happens when the ??AA has their lawyers move to finally close the analog gap (this is inevitable, and if Palladium/TCPA appears, technologically feasible). Then, EVERY recording will be DRM-encumbered, because it might be a recording of one of the RIAA's member's albums, or a shakeycam rip of an MPAA movie. The DRM will be permissive enough to allow mommy to send grandma babys_first_steps.wmv, but tough luck if grandma wants to show it to all her bridge partners, or if mommy has more than 5 relatives she wants to show the movie to.

Then, if the only legal way to make a recording is to record to a DRM encumbered format, does the DMCA allow the creator to break that format?

As for your "nomenclature": "Article 1, Section 8. The Congress shall have power [...] [t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". Copyright was about granting the creator exclusive rights to their output when it was first created. As soon as courts began to find that publishing contracts operate as "Work for Hire" situations even if the contract doesn't explicitly state so and the real authors no longer had any rights to their work, thats when your "owner" nomenclature showed up.

This is the United States and we do have to protect Mickey.

From the following web-site:
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html

Effective January 1, 1978, the United States Copyright law was changed substantially. Previously, a work's period of protection began either when it was published with a proper copyright notice or registered if the work was registered in unpublished form. The period of protection lasted for an initial term of 28 years and could be extended for a second period of 28 years if the copyright was appropriately renewed during the initial 28th year.

When the 1976 law came into effect, the statute extended the renewal term from 28 to 47 years for copyrights that were subsisting on January 1, 1978, making these works eligible for a total term of protection of 75 years and now under the new law, that term is extended for a total term of 95 years. But the copyright owner had to file an appropriate renewal application in order to obtain this extended protection. As a result, a person inquiring as to the status of the copyright of works falling into that time frame has to search the records for that renewal certificate.

In 1992, when the law was amended again, it automatically extend the term of copyrights that had previously been published with a copyright notice from January 1, 1964 through December 31, 1977 to the further term of 47 years and eliminated the requirement to file a renewal application, even though filing such a renewal provides certain benefits. And now, all works published with a copyright notice after January 1, 1964 but before December 31, 1977 have an additional term of 20 years from the previous 47 and a total term of protection of 95 years.

This makes it a very strange license indeed. Microsoft doesn't own the rights to many of the things they are licensing and nobody has to actually accept or reject the license. Basically, that makes it Microsoft saying "Here is a list of stuff".

So why is Microsoft doing this? It could be as benign as clearing up any potential uncertainty to legal usage of Microsoft products. On the other hand, it could be a more subtle attempt at legal "squatting" as suggested by the original article. If say, in five years Microsoft points out they've been asserting their rights over something since 2004 it might hold more legal weight than if they just let it go. (For example, SCO asserting rights over something it does not appear to own, and the fact they haven't asserted these rights in the past is just another argument against them.)

Who knows? It's certainly a bizarre tale. Something drove them to do this, probably something in their legal department. It'd be nice to know.

If you do not understand business law, please don't post as if you do.

Do you?

Linky 1
Linky 2
Linky 3 (I love the quote: "The GPL IS a contract. Calling it a license simply describes the type of contract it is. some people get confused and believe licenses are always required when copyright interests are at stake.")

I think the difficulty arises when people read things like this article which state that the GPL is a license because it is not solely enforcable by contract law. This is true. It is enforcable by contract law if the redistributer claims to have accepted the license. Yet the GPL relies on standard copyright law as a backup in case the redistributor claims to have not accepted the contractual requirements of the GPL license.

Now please, run along. For one day, I've been insulted more than enough for knowing what I'm talking about.

"It was. It was called fair use."

Interesting, I haven't heard that. Do you have a citation?

"I think it's still legal to take a cassette tape and copy somebody else's CD , tape or record, but I'm not sure if it's legal to make a copy digitally, like make an mp3 of somebody else's CD (or even tape or record) anymore. I suspect it still is, though I'm sure the RIAA wouldn't agree."

Also interesting. Do you have anything to back that up? If you would like to see what US law says about "fair use" (as opposed to the common Slashdot misunderstandings), Here's the link. Ivan Hoffman also has an excellent article about Napster's failed attempt to defend their actions as fair use. pdinfo.com addresses the specific issue of music and fair use here ; they write "We have attempted to do find specific details and examples of Fair Use of music. The rumors that it is OK to use so many notes or so many bars are just not true. There is little doubt that, other than private in-home listening and playing, Fair Use of music is extremely limited."

So, if you've found a law that makes it okay to copy my friend's CDs onto cassette tapes, please post the links. In either case, there's an important difference between "under the radar" copyright violation (making copies of your friends CDs in small quantities) for which nobody will get on your case, vs. activities which are truly "fair use."

"Of course, the RIAA IS getting paid. If you copy a CD onto an Audio CD, the RIAA gets a cut. (It's called the `DAT tax'. Google is your friend if you've never heard of it.) I guess they're just not getting paid enough ..."

That's counter to the popular understanding of how it works. It's explained here (Google is indeed great for finding instances of that retarded "the RIAA gets a cut" meme, but for stuff like this, just going to the actual law book will save a lot of wasted time). The vast majority of the money goes to artists, composers and musicians -- who, I should add, generally aren't paid enough. A small percentage goes to record companies. None goes directly to the RIAA.

Lawyers for the original Napster also tried that "fair use" argument, and the Ninth Circuit Court handed them some free clues. Ivan Hoffman does an excellent job of explaining the background.

Nonetheless, this hasn't stopped lots of folks for making arguments similar to the ones you've given; the "I was educating myself by downloading that file" one is quite common. This is understandable, because many folks aren't familiar with a surprisingly simple concept well known to lawyers: "the laugh test." If you wouldn't buy some lame "educational fair use" rational for music piracy, you can't expect anybody else to.

More importantly, hiring anyone to produce anything is not a work-for-hire, unless:

You are paying them a salary, witholding taxes, and giving them a W-2 at tax time

OR

Your contract with them has the words "work-for-hire" on it.

This was all hashed out in '76 with the Playboy vs. Dumas case.

And no matter how loud you say it isn't, that's how it is.

"Anyways, as for downloading not being illegal, yes and no. If you own the physical CD, it is legal to format shift it onto your computer... Whether that means you stick the CD in your drive and rip it, or download the tracks from Kazaa, both are legal methods of format shifting."

The original Napster tried this argument, as well. It didn't work in their case. Here's an excellent summary.

"I do not consider it an overly liberal interpertation of this to say that if I own a piece of music medium A, then I am entitled to make a copy of it by downloading it from a third party."

You and I both know that the majority of P2P traffic is not space-shifting or format-shifting. It is people acquiring music that they didn't already own. Additionally, typically when you download something with a P2P client, it goes into your share directory for others to download. Whether or not you own the music already, you are not allowed to let others download it.

This is why the Ninth Circuit Court rejected the original Napster's "space shifting" argument. Click here for an excellent summary of the Napster fair use arguments -- every music pirate who thinks they understand fair use should read it.

Excellent post. That is one of the points that lawyers for the original Napster tried to make. The 9th circuit court smacked them around with the clue stick. Here's an good summary. Snip:

In this instance, however, the Court found that there was no such transformative use since the original works (songs and recordings) were merely copied in whole and thus the new work merely replaced the old, citing cases involving the mere retransmission of a copyrighted broadcast or creating an MP3 format from an audio CD).

One concept familiar to members of the legal profession but not to many lay people is the "laugh test." "I'm not pirating this music, I'm transforming it" may sound good to a lay person but would not likely pass the laugh test in court.

Napster 1.0 tried this very same argument, and the 9th Circuit Court helpfully cleared that up for them. This article sums up the Napster argument, and the subsequent beating with the legal clue stick.

Of course, folks will continue to defend piracy under a misguided understanding of the concept of "fair use," but as another person put it, all this does is eat away at our real fair use rights.

Anyone get the impression that SCO is claiming that lines such as:

time_t time(time_t __timer);

in files such as time.h are violating their 'copyright'?

In that case, wouldn't it also be a copyright violation to quote the title of a book? US Law seems to be quite clear that a thing like a book title cannot be copyrighted and plenty of boos share titles.

If SCO owns Linux, as they claim, they can assert their copyrights and the GPL simply doesn't exist on Linux anymore

This is incorrect. If you create a derivative work without the permission of the copyright holder (of the original), you own the copyright on the derivative. The copyright holder of the original work has no claim to your derivative.

HOWEVER, if you attempt to exercise any of your intellectual rights regarding your (derivative) work (i.e. publication, distribution, etc) every copy you make of your work will be an infringement of the copyright of the copyright holder of the original.

This is well established in international law. This page provides commentary on Xu Liu vs. Price Waterhouse LLP et. al, which illustrates a similar issue. Apart from this there are (several) cases in which the the rights to a motion picture derived from a book were limited (in terms of time) and not renewed: the distribution of the motion picture was found to be infringing, but in no case has the court found that the derivative work (the motion picture) is owned by the book's copyright holder.

The result is that SCO cannot claim ownership of Linux. All it can claim is that Linux is an infringing derivative, and that is therefore has a claim against anyone who has used and/or copied Linux.

There have been numerous LONG discussions of this very issue, specifically relating to HTML/site design/site construction on the HTML-Business list at HWG.org (HWG = HTML Writer's Guild, not Horny White Guys). If anyone is interested, the discussions are in a searchable archive.

While there's lots of angst and chest beating (very entertaining), it boils down to getting a lawyer well-versed in copyright law to help you develop a STRONG contract.

A frequent contributor to this discussion there is Ivan Hoffman, whose web site is a good jumping off spot for solid advice. YMMV, of course.