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EU Court Adviser Says Software Ideas Can't Be Copyrighted
bhagwad writes "The EU continues to ooze common sense as a court insists that software functions themselves cannot be copyrighted. Drawing a box or moving cursor are examples. To quote: 'If it were accepted that a functionality of a computer program can be protected as such, that would amount to making it possible to monopolize ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.'" Note that this is a "non-binding opinion by Yves Bot, an advocate-general at the Luxembourg-based EU Court of Justice,"
and that the court "will rule on the case next year."
Some common sense! You can't copyright software on its own! It must be part of a device that you are copyrighting.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
How much money will US corporations throw at the EU cheeseheads to decide in their favor?
My guess: a lot.
Can you point out to those folks on the other side of the Atlantic that software patents stiffle invention and innovation.
Thanks.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Rectangles with rounded corners are still safe.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Finally some common sense. This means that finally a government may end up undoing the DAMAGE that it CREATED in the first place, when it came up with all these copyright ideas.
Same goes for patents, by the way, the patents have to go.
Copyrights and patents - in most cases these are tools to create and promote monopolies and PREVENT competition and prevent any sort of innovation and undermine the economy. It's government that started this nonsense, it must be government to end it.
You can't handle the truth.
Just wondering who programmed Yves Bot.
"... that would amount to making it possible to monopolize ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development." If only this common sense extended to all patents as well. As if that would ever happen.
Someone in power gained a shred of common sense? Never thought I'd see the day...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Time to fix the rest of the IP protection system. Oh boy that's a mess!
" software functions themselves cannot be copyrighted"
When it says "software functions", it doesn't mean functions, it means features, eg. click button to update the table. It's basically confirming that copyright can't be used in the same way as patents, that's why we have patents in the first place [as brain-damaged as they may be].
I thought it was software patents that were the problem, not copyright. Or am I missing something?
A kink in your armor, you British Scum.
More and more, I find EU rulings to be oh-so-astute.
I can appreciate that software has an "ideal" form (that which performs the expected task with the least resources) and as such there is most definitely an argument to be made about not copyrighting it.
However, if an author can copyright a certain implementation of a thought, why can't a programmer? Aside from the simplicity of making up new natural language vs. programming languages I see a few too many parallels to believe that software can't be copyrighted (to say nothing of patents)
I *don't want* my competitors to innovate and invent. I *do want* to be able to monopolize ideas, technological progress be damned!
This judge should be silenced, as should anyone that would deny me the ability to deny my potential competitors the ability to steal my clients (and hence my money!).
Since when are the consumers the ones that matter? They are all poor for God's sake!
Are we sure that Yves Bot isn't a Turing test contestant that escaped into the wild? He's displaying extra-human intelligence, it seems.
This isn't some great outbreak of common sense in the EU, they are just looking down their noses at software. When it comes to other intellectual property (books, music, movies, etc.), the EU is more draconian than the US.
I believe this is referred to as irony
There are so many lawsuits flying around over patents, copyrights and wishful thinking that it's no wonder we are in recession. It doesn't matter what you want to do, you are going to get sued by someone. So why bother? People don't.
Seems sensible but I have to wonder what the software actually copied, and I'm too lazy to actually find out. I'm assuming the software did more than simply move a cursor and draw a box.
My opinion.
Company A should not be able to use Company B's sourcecode should they decompile it (or steal it).
However if Company B creates software that moves widgets around a screen depending on buttons you press on a keyboard. Or causes widgets to do tasks- they should not be able to prevent Company A mimicing their software.
Certainly, things like corporate logos should be protected- but what the software does functionally shoudln't.
If one company can independantly write source that acts the same as another company- they have derived it seperately and fairly.
I'm of the same feelings of patents too. If company A can make a machine to do the same as company B- they should be allowed.
They shouldn't be allowed to mould their parts on the other company and build their own machine that way- but if they can build an equivalent machine that does the same thing- that shouldn't be illegal.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
A writer cannot copyright a certain implementation of a thought.
E.g. I just though "Mmmmm. Tasty". Now can I sue for copyright infringement for anyone who writes those two words down in their book?
No.
Whilst we are all saying well done, we are not looking. What are the trying to cover up elsewhere?
Tin foil on.
EU bans claim water can prevent dehydration: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html
He's not saying that functions like
are not copyrightable. He's saying that the function, aka the generic software method, of drawing a box is not copyrightable. Nobody copied the CODE, which would be a copyright violation. They reimplemented the idea. This is just the equivalent of saying that you can still write books about kid wizards even though JK Rowling already did it. You can have spells that petrify people (that's would be a function, right?), but if you go as far as lifting entire passages (copying the actual code that comprises the function), THEN you're talking about a copyright violation.
... ...
On that occasion, I discovered that we both had written the same 20-line assembly language program.
Reflections on Trusting Trust
Ken Thompson
See: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
Given the same problem it is quite possible that two people in two different space/time co-ordinates could arrive at the exact same solution without even being aware of others' works. This alone should be sufficient to abolish medieval copyrights and patents altogether, especially in Software.
I think the judges must have been replaced by aliens. That's the only sensible explanation!
the effects of the financial crisis are beginning to show in the decreased lobbying power of big corporations.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Bullshit. Learn some *basics* before commenting.
1. Copyright is about written works. You know, books, source code, machine code, etc. Without copyright, GPL, BSD, etc. are dead.
2. Patents are about functionality and processes. Things like chemical reaction processes, bending steel into super-widget, etc.
This is the case of one company suing another as *copyright* infringement where the subject of the matter is functionality of software, not actual written work. Hence copyright does not apply. Case closed.
It is so ingrained in the idea of copyrights that "you can't copyright an idea, just its expression" that nearly all the countries, and international treates about it already recognize it.
It is just absurd that SAS is argumentating to the contrary, but why is it newsworth?
Rethinking email
It's not law, it's interpretation. Dutch judge dismissed it citing "numerous" prior art.
To German judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann it looked different, and was worth banning Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Right. I think I'll just patent the process by which an apple falls from a tree.
There is nothing to FEAR but NOTHING itself; and I fear there is a whole lot of nothing going on. --scorpivs
I may be pessimistic, but seeing the line "will rule on the case next year." in my eyes is just another way of saying "corporations, get your bribing in now before it's too late. You have several months to come up with a good bid"
...*ideas*, software or otherwise, can't be copyrighted ANYWHERE, not even the US (in fact copyright law explicitly forbids it). If your're going to post about something, at least be reasonably versed in it. You can't own *ideas*, you can't treat *ideas* as IP, you can't copyright *ideas*, you can't patent *ideas*.
Regardless of what the issue at hand is, the ECJ's legal advisor has said that being able to monopolise software ideas is "to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development".
As an anti-software-patent campaigner, I see great news.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
You can't own *ideas*, you can't treat *ideas* as IP, you can't copyright *ideas*, you can't patent *ideas*.
You can do the first two in your list, but not the last two. You can do those first two things via trade secret. Note that for the second thing, I am using the general concept of IP rather than any legal definition of it. More specifically, it is like: "I know something that you don't, na na! :P". Aside: Note that, the concept of trade secret, irks open-source proponents to no end.
This post sorta reminds me of the SEAware / Phil Katz brouhaha over ARC / PKARC....
SEAware's ARC archiver was coded in C.
Phil re-wrote critical parts of it in assembly language and called it PKARC. It was faster than ARC and 100% compatible to ARC files created by ARC
People used PKARC instead to compress files.
SEAware sued Phil over this.
So Phil created PKZIP, coded in assembly language, using a different, more efficient data compression algorithm.
(the DEFLATE algorithm - www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1951.txt)
Even MORE people use PKZIP to compress files!
(Microsoft eventually embeds 'unzip' support into Windows. Even the Windows version of PKZIP was fast, just like the command line version.)
Alas, in spite of his ingenuity, Phil is found dead in a hotel room, having drunk himself to death (alcoholism).
Rest In Peace, Phil... (-_-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz
As long as it's a non binding opinion it might as well have been the mad ramblings of the local street hobo for the good it will do. This might even be detrimental since this makes the pro-patent lobbyists aware of the possibility that the case's conclusion might seriously affect their changes for having insane software and idea patent law put into permanent place so the scumbag lobbyists will work extra hard to get some legislation past or to have the cases conclusion narrowed and not have broad patent implications. Whatever happens you can trusts assholic institutions and corporations to work for the detriment of the public good.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
It has to be creative and expressive.
Compiled bytecode is neither.
functionality? He actually wrote/said that did he?? I think not, as he's European and the English Oxford dictionary has not yet been bastardised by the Americans sloppy-version of the True Word: 'Function'.
Until it enters the Dictionary, please cease and decist with it's use.
IAAL, but probably not your lawyer.