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How Wolfram Alpha's Copyright Claims Could Change Software
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that Wolfram Research's claim to copyright of results returned by the Wolfram Alpha engine could have significant ramifications for the software industry. 'While software companies routinely retain sole ownership of their software and license it to users, Wolfram Research has taken the additional step of claiming ownership of the output of the software itself,' McAllister writes, pointing out that it is 'at least theoretically possible to copyright works generated by machines.' And, under current copyright law, if any Wolfram claim to authorship of the output of its engine is upheld, by extension the same rules will apply to other information services in similar cases as well. In other words, 'If unique presentations based on software-based manipulation of mundane data are copyrightable, who retains what rights to the resulting works?'"
Given that he (allegedly) tried to sue because of a citation, this should not come as a surprise. Especially since that case was about an employee researcher whose proof (that rule 110 is capable of universal computation):
From this review of 'A New Kind of Science'
So this essentially means that no-one will want to do anything generally useful with alpha, if they won't benefit from their work?
A "derivative work" under US copyright law is an original work, and copyright in the derivative work belongs to the work's author, just as for any other original work. The significance of the status of "derivative work" vs. any other original work is that it is a violation of the copyright of the work from which the derivative work is derived to create such a work without the permission of the copyright owner of that prior work. See the definition of "derivative work" at 17 USC Sec. 101, the description of the exclusive rights in copyrighted works at 17 USC Sec. 106, and the description of copyright ownership at 17 USC Sec. 201.