Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.'"

2 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. It's now a free for all for all file fomats! Yeah! by itsybitsy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Interesting that computer "the format of data files" are not copyrightable!

    "the Court holds that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression. Accordingly, they do not enjoy copyright protection."

    Very interesting.

  2. Re:It's now a free for all for all file fomats! Ye by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's kind of always been like this though. Compatibility and data interchange have always been protected. Without that protection, people would be unable to move their data into other formats and legally, a vendor could kill a customer's access to their own data by discontinuing their software. Those things just can't be allowed.

    What's "new" here is that it has been challenged in court and has been affirmed.

    Now what interferes with some of that are software patents...