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EU Court Rules APIs, Programming Languages Not Copyrightable

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-code dept.

itwbennett writes "The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright. In its ruling on a case brought by SAS Institute against World Programming Limited (WPL), the court said that 'the purchaser of a license for a program is entitled, as a rule, to observe, study or test its functioning so as to determine the ideas and principles which underlie that program.'"

3 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Let's design a programming language... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...in which every book, song, movie, etc. is part of the syntax of the language, thus making them all uncopyrightable.

  2. Re:Interesting. by Local+ID10T · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can convert any stream of bits into an API specification.

    0

    Admittedly it's not a very long stream, but go ahead.

    Ok... here goes:

    !1

    Whew.. that was rough.

    --
    "You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
  3. Re:It's now a free for all for all file fomats! Ye by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    But rounded corners? Still protected?

    It so happened that this morning when I woke up, I inspected the four corners of my mattress.

    Holy Smithereens !!!

    All the four corners of my mattress are round !

    Am I gonna be sued now?

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !