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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."

20 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Pattents and Copyrights by mgcsinc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a place where the definitions in copyright and patent law become sketchy and begin to blur together. The question at hand seems to be one of whether GUI's and other elements of program I/O (this so-called "functional structure") come under copyright protection as elements of a creative rendering or patent protection as means of achieving a computational purpose; the idea that such elements may be shakily protected by both seems dangerous and a strong possibility, in Britain's case anyway (although the actual case has yet to commence).

    1. Re:Pattents and Copyrights by DickBreath · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think that Mark Summerfield's famous "Letter from 2020" touched on this.

      Fortunately, common sense prevailed, helped along by the good old dollar I've no doubt and they accepted both software patents and a redefinition of copyright to suit global corporations. Once the USA, Japan and Europe had uniform intellectual property laws to protect our corporations and our way of life, everyone else had to play ball or they couldn't trade. The result has been that every algorithm and computer program and every piece of music and film (after all music and film can be put into digital form and are therefore a form of software) have been patented. No more variations on Beethoven (unless you've got the patentees approval). No more amateur participation in music or film which might risk lowering standards. No more challenge to established business and business practices.

      Alas, the osopinion site where the letter was published seems to be broken. But thanks to Google's cache, you can still find it . (Could Google get into trouble for caching a subversive letter such as this :-)

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  2. "Commandeering the plot of a book?" by xTown · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First of all, this also sounds like a rehash of the "look and feel" lawsuits between Microsoft and Apple. "Your program looks like ours, so you obviously stole it!"

    Second, if you couldn't "commandeer" plots, I doubt anybody would be writing any books these days.

    1. Re:"Commandeering the plot of a book?" by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No, there could be something to this case.

      Consider the original COBOL work probably lived on some big iron, and like our legacy COBOL systems, shipped with the code.

      Maybe Easyjet (or some co-company) was once a licensee of the original work. Rather than pay for an upgrade, they hire a handful of geeks to port it to VB.

      There's infringement there - it's not an original work.

      It's more like taking a french novel, translating it to english, and slapping your name on it.

      Or taking some GPL project, running it through a C to (whatever language) translator, and selling it as your own.

      The judge merely allowed them their day in court, which sounds like the right decision to me.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    2. Re:"Commandeering the plot of a book?" by xTown · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ah, I hadn't thought of that. Interesting point.

      It brings up an issue of interface vs. implementation. I ported a bunch of software for my employer a couple of years ago, and while I needed to duplicate the UI and the output of the ports, I was otherwise free to code it as I wished. (I was porting internally-developed test

      I've always believed that I am the sole author of the ports (well, actually, my employer is, but that's a different story), regardless of the fact that I didn't actually design the output or specify the way that the programs got their input. But we're talking thousands of lines that I wrote to get from point A to point B, and a couple hundred hours of working time that it took me to do it.

      It sounds like a gray area to me, which, I suppose is the point of allowing the suit to go ahead.

  3. Hmm by ikkonoishi · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It seems that openres was badly written also.

  4. Re:You got sued, yay! by Esion+Modnar · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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).

    That's actually a pretty good analogy.

    The reason all rockets, missiles, spears and yes, penises (penii?), look functionally similar is because they all do pretty much the same thing: they penetrate some medium, and streamlining is a necessity. So why should it be surprising that two reservation systems, written in different code, should be functionally similar? (I would be surprised if they were not.) Unless the plaintiff can show proof that the defendant was actually eating off their plate, then the case should be thrown out.

    And what if Boeing sued Lockheed because it built planes that were "functionally similar," in that its planes had swept-back wings and smooth cylindrical fuselages? It'd get laughed out of court.

    Heck, I seem to recall that calculus mathematics was developed independently at roughly the same time. This kind of thing just happens, people. Get over it.

    --

    They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
  5. Re:so! The world is going mad by El · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I assume the cow was sentenced to "death by being slathered in barbeque soft and slowly turned over a fire"? Judges gotta eat too! And if you don't beleive some women are witches, you've never met my wife!

    --

    "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

  6. Re:Why is this bizarre? by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Capcom v. Data East

    Data East released "Fighters History", an obvious clone of the wildly popular Street Fighter II. It had similar characters with similar moves...

    Capcom lost, and the floodgates opened for folks like SNK and Sammy to inundate us with SFII clones, each one more derivative of the last!

    This case, however, could be more than just "look and feel". If it turns out that Easyjet once licensed the original COBOL application (and big iron apps like that tend to ship with code), and decided to port rather than continuing to pay licensing fees...

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  7. Interesting dilemma by zmooc · · Score: 4, Interesting
    In a way, they're right; there are basicly 2 ways of looking at software. The first way is to consider software some kind of apparatus, the second way is to consider it a work of art. And us Open Source guys always use the latter as an argument in our battle against software patents. So from that I deduce that most of "us" consider the latter approach the right one. At least, I do.

    And that's a bit of a problem; lawsuits like the one described in the story are considered pretty normal in the music industry; if OpenOffice and MSOffice both were songs, OpenOffice would probably have to pay some kind of fee to MSOffice for using their intellectual property and we'd all consider that normal...

    Anyway... It'd be interesting to hear what other people think about this because to me it is a fundamental problem with how I view the whole copyright/patent/freespeech-discussion.

    One solution would be to consider the sourcecode a work of art and the resulting binary an apparatus but that would be ridiculous since it would introduce a huge legal difference between scripts and binaries which would be great to feed a huge discussion but clearly is not a practical solution. So maybe the question we (or at least I) should ask ourselves first, is "What exactly are the differences between sourcecode and compiled sourcecode from a moral and IP point of view?"

    --
    0x or or snor perron?!
  8. Re:Copyrighting and Idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Considering that Shakespeare stole heavily from older works I think he best keep his mouth shut.

    Romeo and Juliet = Tristan und Isolde
    Midsummers Nights Dream = Chaucer, Ovid and other folk tales
    Hamlet = based on a 12th century tale by Saxo Grammaticus

    There are some that say that Shakespeare even bordered on plagiarism.

  9. Microsoft best avoid England... by tugrul · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Microsoft probably "studied the [XYZ] system closely and produced a system that operated in the same way" as many times as anyone else has.

    Does MSN + Messenger remind you of anything? I'm sure AOL feels that the plot of their book was comandeered and wouldn't mind thwacking MS again to pay off more of their debt.

    How about .NET? Who saw that and didn't think Java?

    I'm sure there are even less generic examples that are just not occuring to me at the moment.

  10. I'm confused. by Snodgrass · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What does Utah have to do with anything? Bulletproof is in California and Navitaire is in Minnesota (according to their website).

    I don't see how Utah comes into play here. Unless they think that since SCO can get away with frivolous suits in Utah, then everybody can.

  11. Lotus vs. Borland by sealawyer2003 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This case is being compared to Lotus v. Borland. In that US case the trial court initially got found infringement. An appellate court overturned the decision, and the Supreme Court was split 4-4 with one judge not taking part. That means that the Lotus v. Borland case is the law in only one circuit in the US. I would expect the courts in other circuits might very well reach a different decision.

  12. Finally, some good words for UTAH! by cheesedog · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm glad to finally see something making sense again in the fine state of Utah.

    Navitairo = SCO Bulletproof = IBM

    Navitairo files suit in London. Bulletproof files counter-suit in Utah.

    Now how'd that happen? Utah courts are suddenly making sense?

  13. Not a good analogy by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 2, Interesting
    A piece of software is different from a novel because one is the solution to a problem, and the other is the creation of an idea.

    I've worked with people who could come up with fundamentally the same two pieces of software because the systems architects who helped train them would have given them the same approaches.

    The analogy that I could give is that of a journey between 2 points. If I wrote the directions for how to get from London to Gloucester, chances are you'd follow a similar route.

  14. Re:Copyrighting and Idea by w42w42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I guess my question to the courts would be then how can there be so many multi-national auto manufacturers (pick any industry) in the world, all manufacturing competing product? If this thing is held up in court, then it doesn't seem a far stretch to government mandated monopolies to any company that can prove they were first.

  15. The Demise of Western civilization by dpilot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here it is, and I'm not even kidding.

    Western civilization arose and became dominant through innovation - "Standing on the shoulders of giants." The way patent and copyright laws are going in the West, the giants not only no longer want anyone standing on their shoulders, they don't even want anyone casting similar shadows or reaching for the same goals.

    Look to China, and expect them to walk a fine line between sufficient copyright and patent protection that we will still trade with them, yet avoid the sheer lunacy we're seeing now. I wouldn't be surprised if copyright and patent issues force dual-design, in some cases to separate internally acceptable from exportable. Through the next century China's domestic market will be the next boom area, and I doubt they're going to let Western copyright and patent silliness stop them from modernizing, even if it does prevent some exports.

    We're imposing legal morbidity on our technology. Those who don't will have an edge over us.

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  16. Re:Maybe not so cut-and-dried... by hoover10001 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At Oracle World, Craig Barrett pulled out a automobile designer, I can't rember who it was. But the designer basically said that they deconstructed a Ferrari to create their new production car. How is this different than software engineers deconstructing other applications?

  17. Re:Who owns Visicalc today ? by ScottSpeaks! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IBM owns VisiCalc. Back when 1-2-3 eclipsed VC in the spreadsheet market, Lotus bought the company out, and of course IBM now owns Lotus. They don't seem especially fond of MS these days. Incidentally, Dan Bricklin (creator of VisiCalc, for the kidz in the audience) has permission from Lotus/IBM to offer the original VC for DOS 1.0 on his website.