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."

Comments

It won't happen

[tepples]

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.

This would never fly

[tarp]

First of all, every major software company including Microsoft will be against this idea, and the BSA with its powerful lobby, is against this idea. This would make it much more difficult for them to protect their software. Patents are just the icing on the cake for software companies. They are much more difficult to get. Copyright has always been a given.

The idea that software could not be copyrighted but books, music, etc. could is hypocritical. Copyright would have to be removed from all those forms of media to be consistent with software not being copyrightable.

It'll never happen.

Who comes up with these ideas

[Henry V .009]

Doing the exact opposite would be sane. This isn't.

Re:Hurt the GPL?

[Sc00ter]

How? the way the GPL works is that it depends on copyright. Without copyright the GPL is worthless. People could "take" you code and do anything with it, not have to contribute back, or even put the GPL back on it.

Patents take time and money to get, something a lot of people don't have time or money to do.

I agree

[CrazyJim1]

Copywrights protect code you've written. Patents prevent everyone from writing code.

Re:MS Welcomes...

[squiggleslash]

Somehow, I doubt Microsoft wants:

• Unix to enter the public domain
• Everything Microsoft did 20 years ago to enter the public domain
• Everything Microsoft published more than a year ago that it hasn't, today, got a patent on, to enter the public domain
• IBM to have more of its technologies in Microsoft products than vice-versa

The suggestion, incidentally, that this has to do with defeating the GPL, is patently absurd (patently, geddit? arf arf!) The GPL can be rewritten within this regime to force all use of patented technologies to be released with source and with all other patented technologies in the same product open too. Additionally, with patents requiring details of implementation, we'll see a lot more source code, documentation on proprietary formats, etc.

If you're in the proprietary software business, a successful lawsuit here could not create a worse state of affairs.

Of course, as I see it, it's highly unlikely to be completely successful. You may, at most, see a strengthening of fair use in some quarters, as the courts attempt to reconsolile the constitutional right to due process with the draconian nature of modern copyright law. But there's little reason to believe that copyright law inherently violates due process.