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Lawsuit Filed Against Software Copyright
mdielmann writes "CNet has a story about a lawsuit asking for copyright protection to be removed from software, while leaving patent protection in place. Intellectual-property consultant Greg Aharonian hopes to convince the court that software makers can protect their products adequately through patents, which provide more comprehensive protection but are difficult to obtain and expire in a shorter period of time. It looks like this would hamstring licenses such as the GPL, which are often based on copyright privileges, while leaving OSS vulnerable to patent infringement. Apparently, he's been working on this for the last three years."
Difficult to obtain, indeed.
In comparison to a copyright, yes. Copyrights are automatic (more or less). Registered copyrights just require a fee and some documentation. Patents require a review process (ok, a *bad* review process, but still harder to get than a copyright).
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
How can you claim that patents are not harder to get than copyright? Your post, mine too, are both protected by copyright. Neither of us did ANYTHING to accomplish that. TO get a patent you have to hire a patent lawyer to help write it, pay the filing fee, and it frequently takes multiple submissions to get accepted (if it gets accepted). Then about 3 years later, poof you have a patent!
Don't exaggerate by claiming patents are as easy to get as copyright. It's entirely false.
Now as someone who works in the game industry, how exactly would patents protect games? If anything, strong patent enforcement would shut down the game industry given the patents owned by the graphics companies, not help it.
My summary: A total removal of copyright protection is not asked (and will NEVER be granted by the courts; that's something for Congres.) Best case is that the courts declare some license conditions and DMCA clauses "non-binding", they put bounds on the rights software owners claim to have. (All the data on your computer is ours...) Most likely result: effectively nothing changes.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}