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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."
The Supreme Court of the United States indicated in its Eldred v. Ashcroft opinion that the Court isn't in the mood to to legislate from the bench, that it's Congress's job to sort out the scope of copyright law so long as there's a semblance of a right of fair use preserved to the people.
Im not going to comment on the liklyhood that this will or will not be succsessful.
If we have to choose one protection for software it would have to be copyright.
Patents basically kill any type of compentition. You could charge whatever you wanted and sue the hell out of anyone who tries to write a competeing product. It basically means that lots of profit for the patent holder and no competition driven innovation or service.
Copyright on the other hand protects a companies specific implementation of an idea. No one else can use that implementation but it doesnt prevent someone from making a compediting product.
If linux didnt exist, Microsoft probably wouldnt be trying to create new innovations for longhorn such as avalon.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.