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British Court Issues Bizarre Copyright Ruling

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thought-we-settled-this-already dept.

dipfan writes "In a re-run of the Lotus v Borland case that went to the US Supreme Court, the High Court in London has allowed a copyright infringement battle between two rival airline booking programs to go to trial, despite agreement by all sides that the two programs are written in different code. The airline Easyjet is being sued by software house Navitaire, creators of an online booking system called Openres, over Easyjet's booking system named eRes, developed by Bulletproof Technologies of California. Openres was written in Cobol, while eRes was written in Visual Basic, and the programs are also different in structure. But, according to the FT article: 'Parallels had been drawn between appropriating the "functional structure" of a computer system and commandeering the plot of a book, the judge noted.' If Navitaire wins, then any program that works like another program - even if written in different code - could be vulnerable. What happened to the principle that you can't copyright an idea? Bulletproof is counter-suing Navitaire in the district of Utah."

4 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Re:English suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's a sad fact that everytime an english puts his hand on something, it gets screwed. Look at what they have done to China, India, Middle East, Africa, and so on. Now they are messing with patents. What can we expect?

    Yea, they deported all the religious fanatics to America and we end up with Jerry Fawlwell, Trent Lott, et. al. They deported all the criminals to Australia, now those people know how to party!

  2. Re:Microsoft has an idea...... by brokencomputer · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    what does England have to do with suing linus?

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    The Television Wiki
  3. Re:You got sued, yay! by LilMikey · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This is silly. I am suing all males of the human species, because their penis infringes upon my own penis's "functional structure" (although I admit that due to their vastly smaller size, our structures are different).

    I see this post was written in a different language where "smaller" really means "incredibly larger", kind of like post-fix. I dismiss the case.

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    LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
  4. Re:Utah - it figures by Excen · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Or maybe something in the water?

    Nah, the Mormons are causing an intellectual vacuum in the state, sucking all of the common sense out of anyone within a thousand miles of that huge temple in Salt Lake City.

    "No beer until you finish your tequila!"
    -Leela's Dad

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    "No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad