Visual C++ (and I believe Borland's C++ Builder post v4) support debugging across libraries and processes. Just start your EXE and make sure all the DLLs have debug information, and you can happily put breakpoints into them, step into them, etc. Also works for out-of-process components, although the best there is to run the component in a separate IDE/debugger session.
I wrote a backup script in Cygwin's bash that avoids the problem of having a huge amount of redundanct backups. It is somewhat like one-way file synchronisation with versioning.
Assume that your source and destination for the backup are both on normal RW filesystems (a standard CDRW won't do, but a UDF formatted on using In-CD / DirectCD will).
The script uses standard *nix utilities to scan the source and destination, and determine which files (if any) have changes (using md5 hashes). The destination directory is then renamed to the current date and time, and a directory with the original date and time created; then all changed files are moved out of the "new" destination and into the "old" one. Finally the new versions of the changed files are copied from the source to the "new" destination. The "old" destination folder can then be compressed in order to save space.
This gives the advantage of having an always up-to-date backup, but having all historical files available and using only a minimal amount of space (files that haven't changed are not redundanctly backed up in many places). Its sortof like the inverse of an incremental backup.
Unfortunately this system won't handle backups larger than the size of the destination media, unless you split the source into several smaller parts. You may also need to move old directories / achives off the media periodically to make space.
The system could be improved by keeping an index with MD5 hashes in the destination, and cycling through various destinations periodically for added redundancy.
Unfortunately this ignores stupidity factor. Some solutions are just too stupid to be suggested by an expert, and could end up getting patented. There really are patents for multi-time pads out there!
While some may say that this is a good thing (prevents other people from being stupid by taking away the stupid option), it isn't really. Sometimes an overly broad stupid patent may cover a decent idea that the original (stupid) inventor didn't think of. Worse, a patent usually indicates some sort of progress or better "thing", and through this can encourage licensing and adoption of the technology. Not good.
My contention is that they shouldn't be able to withdraw a work from publication. If they made it available from an on-demand publisher, even at a higher price (as would be expected for single copy publication), I would be happy.
Then please, oh Mr Guru, tell us what we are to use as a contraction for the phrase "Copyright, Trademarks and Patents", or do we have to say it every time?
CATCH A FUCKING WAKE UP. "Intellectual Property" is NOT defined by the FSF. It is defined by the legal and accounting professions. In law a Copyright, Trademark or Patent IS considered property. In account an intangible asset IS considered property. If you bothered to read a recognised source of information on the subject you would understand the huge commonality between these concepts. And in English RMS is NOT the source of definitions for words and phrases.
The FSF's diatribes about Copyright and piracy show a complete lack of understanding of free market economics and especially the concept of economic value; yet these are precisely the reasons for which Copyright was entrenched as a limited right to property in the US and many other free market countries.
But if you bothered to read my comments instead of misrepresenting my ideas, you would realise that these are works in publication, and I am referring to works OUT of publication.
I think you're missing the point. Making a copy is a copyright violation, because the copyright over the work is still valid. Making the work available on (say) gnutella is also a copyright violation. Buying a copy for the library doesn't make the work public domain, it just makes it more accessible. And when that copy is lost or damaged you can't replace it, because it is out of publication, but it is still a copyright violation to duplicate the Library of Congress copy.
Copyright law should have a "use it or lose it" clause that applies once a work has been published. At the very least, every published work should be made available in electronic form to the Library of Congress, and any out of publication work may be reproduced by an on-demand printer and a standard fee paid to the copyright owner.
The worst part about this is not that White Wolf are bringing WoD (modern) to an end. It is that they are abusing their copyright privlidge in order to do so. Yet another creation of humanity will disappear into archives for 84 (more) years, and be completely forgotten, save for those who already have the books.
No copyright holder should have the right to withdraw a work from publication without ceding their copyright. If it doesn't pay to keep it in publication anymore, the benefit offered by copyright has been fully realised, and the work should fall into the public domain.
Well, WinDriver offers a product for building Solaris drivers... but not specifically USB ones.
HOWEVER... I've defended this position many times before, so I guess I'll defend it again: if you buy a piece of hardware, and the manufacturer doesn't claim to support it on a particular platform, then you can't expect it to be supported on that platform.
And, from the opposite perspective, a manufacturer has every right to expect that their hardware is NOT supported on other platforms without their approval! Why? Because in many cases the hardware (and thus the manufacturer) gets a bad name, because of a poorly implemented driver.
This happened with a huge number of modems, printers and video cards that were unofficially supported by free *nix operating systems. Telling people not to buy a particular hardware item because it isn't supported on certain operating systems is one thing... but telling them "don't buy an XYZ because its shit - it keeps crashing and prints/scans/displays/calls funny" is completely unfair when it works quite acceptably on a platform on which it is supported.
Third parties aren't meant to maintain the driver. Performance isn't an issue for USB 1.1 (maybe for USB 2.0, depending on the device), and you're talking about a company that specialises in creating device drivers -- their collective knowledge of performance and stability issues almost certain outweighs what can be achieved by a non-dedicated (to driver development) individual or team.
Good point. Then company X can sell a binary to a customer, but they must give the customer the source code. Then the customer has the source code and binary (all GPL) for company X's version, and can at their sole descretion "give it to the world", without limitation redistributing it to anyone, anywhere, for profit or gratis as they see fit.
I'm not a driver developer, but I've had to look into the possibility of cross-platform USB (and other) drivers before. Do yourself a favour and take a look at WinDriver (no, I have nothing whatsoever to do with the company or the product).
The initial cost can be a bit steep, but the ROI could well be worth it. The suite allows you to write a USB driver that is source-compatible over Win98/Me/2K/XP/2003, Linux 2.0/2.2/2.4, and WinNT, for USB 1.1/2.0 and UHCI, OHCI, or EHCI.
Actually form can be very important. One of the biggest fears of a traveller is that they will have their passport stolen while in a foreign country. Then you're basically screwed.
For this reason many travellers carry photocopies of their documents (separate from the real thing). This makes it a lot easier to deal with the various authorities that can get involved in investigating the theft and getting you a new passport, VISA, etc.
Notice how people who eat a lot of fried food get fat? That's right. Fat makes you fat.
You may want to update your dietary knowledge. Fried foods are not intrinsically bad because they are fried. These days almost all frying is done in vegetable oils, which are good for you.
The two problems with "fried foods" are that the bulk of fast food is carbs, and frying at too high a temperature transforms some oil parts into carcinogens.
Micropayments are often discussed from technical and commercial viewpoints, without considering social aspects.
The world's biggest information providers are, by and large, in first world countries with strong currencies. The most needy (as opposed to the biggest) consumers of this information are in third world countries with weak currencies.
Micropayments stand to put huge amounts of information beyond the reach of those who need it in the process of improving society, and quite often the content provides don't realise this (or worse, couldn't care). And it's not only the cost that is the issue; foreign exchange is a controlled commodity in many developing countries, requiring government approval to conduct such a transaction. The implications for free movement of information are enormous.
Equally disturbing is the impact that micropayments will have on the ability to find information. Search engines will have to negotiate with huge numbers content providers, and will probably charge for searches. Any content provider that does not have a relationship with a search engine will end up having their information cached (bypassing the payment system) or unindexed.
Lets take the text entry box. If software and a UI were a story, the text entry box would be in the cast of characters. So would the file menu, and the help screen.
Sorry, but I don't accept the proposal on which you've based the rest of your argument. A text entry box would not constitute a character in a story. Excluding the most trivial of programs, you can't interact meaningfully with a text entry box on its own, nor can it interact with the setting (the program's functionality) meaningfully on its own.
If you likened the UI as a whole to a character, I would be more inclined to to consider any following argument as potentially valid. A UI as a whole can be described as "having character", and can be seen as a character. A UI can have a personality, can interact meaningfully with a user and the setting, and can be recognisable and distinguishable from other UIs on the basis of its many traits.
A single GUI widget, by comparison, is merely a character trait. Each widget/trait has some variance, but handler enough in an of itself to be considered significant. It is many traits together that make a character.
I think you take an overly simplistic view of software....
And I think you read too much pulp fiction if you think a textbox could be a character.
Any reader will tell you that the paper in a book makes the difference between a book you keep and a book you throw away, even when the same story is present.
Sorry... hard cover pulp fiction on acid free paper.
I don't know about you, but I've never seem myself nor any of my friends throw away a book because of the paper its printed on. A collector may insist on a quality medium in order to preserve the work for as long as possible, or attain the best use (say, CD versus tape for music), but this is hardly comparable to a good versus a bad UI.
Patenting every tiny aspect of every possible software technique and over reaching copyright legislation will only have the effect of creating mega-monopolies which cannot be broken.
Amazing what you can put into peoples' mouths. I am most assuredly not pro software patents.
As I have said in my (many) comments on this thread, there are numerous elements of software design and implementation that are well known and hence not subject to copyright or patent law (or at least shouldn't be). There are very few elements that are, of themselves, novel (I don't think Adobe's tabbed toolbars are particularly novel), and this is a core reason for my disagreeing with the concept of software patents.
But a GUI as a whole is not, in most applications, merely a sum of its parts. It requires a major investment in time, resources and testing to discover a presentation format that is functional and aesthetically pleasing, a series of interactions that is intuitive and simple, yet flexible enough for comprehensive coverage of the available functionality and accessible enough for novices and advanced users alike.
Corporations like Apple, Microsoft and Adobe pour millions into UI design R&D, and they have a legitimate expectation that this investment, like their software offerings as whole, are afforded some degree of protection -- not over the elements that make up their UI, but over the UI as a cohesive whole.
Copyright protects idea and expression, but its protection of idea is very limited. The expression of the idea changes in a translation, or in an adaption to screen or to theatre, but all of these are derivations protected by copyright, because they express the same idea.
When looking at an idea in terms of copyright, you have to be very specific. A "space ship" is not an idea, it is a well known concept. A space ship named "Enterprise NCC 1701-D" with a particular look and means of functioning, a purpose and a recognisable crew, on the other hand, is an idea that is covered by Copyright.
It is true that over time ideas can become well known concepts, and lose their novelty and uniqueness that make the valuable to a copyright holder. This is a development of genre, and the first contribution of a work to the public domain.
When I said that copyright is specifically intended to protect ideas, I meant just that. It does not just protect a single printed book, or even all impressions of that book. It also protects translations, adaptions, grammatical corrections, and future works that, by virtue of their content, could be considered an extention to (and hence derivation of) the work.
In the end it comes down to a court deciding whether one work is substantively similar to another, as you say.
Quite easily: "John Mills goes to Hogwarts", or "John Mills goes to Wizard School" and a critic in a newspaper (e-zine, the front cover, whatever) mentions its similarity to Harry Potter.
The more you change, the less of a problem you have. Writing a book about another child attending Hogwarts and including all the "supporting cast and crew" (excluding Potter and closest friends) would be a problem. Creating your own wizarding school with its own traditions and traits is more than likely creating a new story in the same genre.
I think you bring up a good issue, but aren't cases of dilusion like this much better handled with trademark law?
As I've pointed out in other comments, trademark law does not protect your character's personality, quirks, or any distinguishing feature that makes him/her valuable. Trademark law only protects the character's name.
Actually, copyright doesn't protect ideas or the medium but rather the specific expression or specific work, which much more narrow than protecting ideas.
Copyright law it phrased as the protection of a specific expression of an idea, and encompasses both idea and expression. A work could infringe on a copyright if it is substantively similar, even though it may use different names and slightly varied descriptions.
Like Barney(R), the purple dinosaur who is protected vigorously primarily with trademark law.
Trademark law is a more powerful tool than copyright law, because it is easier to demonstrate infringement (and damage). But the trademark in question doesn't extend to cover the purple dinosaur itself... just the name.
I think RMS made a great point when he said that talking about copyrights, patents, and trademarks under the unbrella of "Intellectual Property" is primarily designed to blur the very specific balance that exists between copyrights, patents, and trademarks.
A very specific balance with very large grey areas. In general a patent covers function, copyright covers form, and trademark covers names. But where US law will allow patenting of a novel GUI idiom/concept, other legal systems may not accept a patent, and protection will be afforded by graphic design or even copyright law.
Maybe it's me, but I don't see why we can't protect both the authenticity of an author and allow fans the freedom to write their own stories with conventional copyright and trademark laws?
The story in question is a judgement (an interpretation of the law), not a new law. Existing law quite clearly disallows derivative works, including many forms of "fan fiction". My other comments go into more depth on this. Fan fiction that uses core characters (in particular) will be a copyright infringement!
The problem is to strike a balance between letting the author create and profit from an idea (without third parties, including fanfic authors, possibly detracting from that idea or drawing attention to their works instead), and allowing that work to be derived and eventually enter the public domain in a timely fashion.
Pah! The most intelligent response I've had so far, and you post as AC. Weenie;p
No, copyright protection is intended to protect a creative implementation. Copyright law specifically does not protect functional elements of a work.
I agree. But I'm not sure of the courts' interpretation of whether a particular GUI element is functional or creative. The case law you refer to sounds is very interesting, I will go an read up on it.
One of the complications here is that the US patent system allows for patenting of GUI element (e.g. Adobe's tabbed tool trays), while in other systems this is a grey area that is generally assumed (to some extent) to fall under Copyright law. As I said in another post, there has to be damage in order to sue for (Copyright) infringement, and generally damage (for copying GUI elements) will only occur when the copier is creating a competing product, in which event the case law you cite will probably have effect.
it could be generalized to imply that once you have used some type of program (a spreadsheet, a database, etc) you are permanently blocked from ever writing a competing product because you might use some ideas you gathered from using that program.
It could, but this is unlikely. Take for example restraints of trade: even if you are restrained from using any knowledge you gained during the course of an employment, you are not restrained from using general knowledge applicable in your field of expertise.
In software there is a body of knowledge that encompasses a suitable approach to solving a problem; and that body of knowledge includes standard practices for GUI design.
I think in this case (as in so many others) the devil is in the details.
Slashdot Mirror
Visual C++ (and I believe Borland's C++ Builder post v4) support debugging across libraries and processes. Just start your EXE and make sure all the DLLs have debug information, and you can happily put breakpoints into them, step into them, etc. Also works for out-of-process components, although the best there is to run the component in a separate IDE/debugger session.
I've tidied up the current version and put it up at http://www.crypt.co.za/files/StorStuff.sh. Please be sure to read the warnings at the top of the script.
If you try it on a non-Cygwin system, I'd appreciate any feedback.
I wrote a backup script in Cygwin's bash that avoids the problem of having a huge amount of redundanct backups. It is somewhat like one-way file synchronisation with versioning.
Assume that your source and destination for the backup are both on normal RW filesystems (a standard CDRW won't do, but a UDF formatted on using In-CD / DirectCD will).
The script uses standard *nix utilities to scan the source and destination, and determine which files (if any) have changes (using md5 hashes). The destination directory is then renamed to the current date and time, and a directory with the original date and time created; then all changed files are moved out of the "new" destination and into the "old" one. Finally the new versions of the changed files are copied from the source to the "new" destination. The "old" destination folder can then be compressed in order to save space.
This gives the advantage of having an always up-to-date backup, but having all historical files available and using only a minimal amount of space (files that haven't changed are not redundanctly backed up in many places). Its sortof like the inverse of an incremental backup.
Unfortunately this system won't handle backups larger than the size of the destination media, unless you split the source into several smaller parts. You may also need to move old directories / achives off the media periodically to make space.
The system could be improved by keeping an index with MD5 hashes in the destination, and cycling through various destinations periodically for added redundancy.
Unfortunately this ignores stupidity factor. Some solutions are just too stupid to be suggested by an expert, and could end up getting patented. There really are patents for multi-time pads out there!
While some may say that this is a good thing (prevents other people from being stupid by taking away the stupid option), it isn't really. Sometimes an overly broad stupid patent may cover a decent idea that the original (stupid) inventor didn't think of. Worse, a patent usually indicates some sort of progress or better "thing", and through this can encourage licensing and adoption of the technology. Not good.
My contention is that they shouldn't be able to withdraw a work from publication. If they made it available from an on-demand publisher, even at a higher price (as would be expected for single copy publication), I would be happy.
Then please, oh Mr Guru, tell us what we are to use as a contraction for the phrase "Copyright, Trademarks and Patents", or do we have to say it every time?
CATCH A FUCKING WAKE UP. "Intellectual Property" is NOT defined by the FSF. It is defined by the legal and accounting professions. In law a Copyright, Trademark or Patent IS considered property. In account an intangible asset IS considered property. If you bothered to read a recognised source of information on the subject you would understand the huge commonality between these concepts. And in English RMS is NOT the source of definitions for words and phrases.
The FSF's diatribes about Copyright and piracy show a complete lack of understanding of free market economics and especially the concept of economic value; yet these are precisely the reasons for which Copyright was entrenched as a limited right to property in the US and many other free market countries.
I'm flattered :)
But if you bothered to read my comments instead of misrepresenting my ideas, you would realise that these are works in publication, and I am referring to works OUT of publication.
I think you're missing the point. Making a copy is a copyright violation, because the copyright over the work is still valid. Making the work available on (say) gnutella is also a copyright violation. Buying a copy for the library doesn't make the work public domain, it just makes it more accessible. And when that copy is lost or damaged you can't replace it, because it is out of publication, but it is still a copyright violation to duplicate the Library of Congress copy.
Copyright law should have a "use it or lose it" clause that applies once a work has been published. At the very least, every published work should be made available in electronic form to the Library of Congress, and any out of publication work may be reproduced by an on-demand printer and a standard fee paid to the copyright owner.
The worst part about this is not that White Wolf are bringing WoD (modern) to an end. It is that they are abusing their copyright privlidge in order to do so. Yet another creation of humanity will disappear into archives for 84 (more) years, and be completely forgotten, save for those who already have the books.
No copyright holder should have the right to withdraw a work from publication without ceding their copyright. If it doesn't pay to keep it in publication anymore, the benefit offered by copyright has been fully realised, and the work should fall into the public domain.
Well, WinDriver offers a product for building Solaris drivers ... but not specifically USB ones.
HOWEVER ... I've defended this position many times before, so I guess I'll defend it again: if you buy a piece of hardware, and the manufacturer doesn't claim to support it on a particular platform, then you can't expect it to be supported on that platform.
And, from the opposite perspective, a manufacturer has every right to expect that their hardware is NOT supported on other platforms without their approval! Why? Because in many cases the hardware (and thus the manufacturer) gets a bad name, because of a poorly implemented driver.
This happened with a huge number of modems, printers and video cards that were unofficially supported by free *nix operating systems. Telling people not to buy a particular hardware item because it isn't supported on certain operating systems is one thing ... but telling them "don't buy an XYZ because its shit - it keeps crashing and prints/scans/displays/calls funny" is completely unfair when it works quite acceptably on a platform on which it is supported.
Third parties aren't meant to maintain the driver. Performance isn't an issue for USB 1.1 (maybe for USB 2.0, depending on the device), and you're talking about a company that specialises in creating device drivers -- their collective knowledge of performance and stability issues almost certain outweighs what can be achieved by a non-dedicated (to driver development) individual or team.
One person's right is another person's limitation.
This is a fact (and necessiry) of law. Live with it.
Good point. Then company X can sell a binary to a customer, but they must give the customer the source code. Then the customer has the source code and binary (all GPL) for company X's version, and can at their sole descretion "give it to the world", without limitation redistributing it to anyone, anywhere, for profit or gratis as they see fit.
I'm not a driver developer, but I've had to look into the possibility of cross-platform USB (and other) drivers before. Do yourself a favour and take a look at WinDriver (no, I have nothing whatsoever to do with the company or the product).
The initial cost can be a bit steep, but the ROI could well be worth it. The suite allows you to write a USB driver that is source-compatible over Win98/Me/2K/XP/2003, Linux 2.0/2.2/2.4, and WinNT, for USB 1.1/2.0 and UHCI, OHCI, or EHCI.
Actually form can be very important. One of the biggest fears of a traveller is that they will have their passport stolen while in a foreign country. Then you're basically screwed.
For this reason many travellers carry photocopies of their documents (separate from the real thing). This makes it a lot easier to deal with the various authorities that can get involved in investigating the theft and getting you a new passport, VISA, etc.
With a Smart Card you have no such luck.
You may want to update your dietary knowledge. Fried foods are not intrinsically bad because they are fried. These days almost all frying is done in vegetable oils, which are good for you.
The two problems with "fried foods" are that the bulk of fast food is carbs, and frying at too high a temperature transforms some oil parts into carcinogens.
Micropayments are often discussed from technical and commercial viewpoints, without considering social aspects.
The world's biggest information providers are, by and large, in first world countries with strong currencies. The most needy (as opposed to the biggest) consumers of this information are in third world countries with weak currencies.
Micropayments stand to put huge amounts of information beyond the reach of those who need it in the process of improving society, and quite often the content provides don't realise this (or worse, couldn't care). And it's not only the cost that is the issue; foreign exchange is a controlled commodity in many developing countries, requiring government approval to conduct such a transaction. The implications for free movement of information are enormous.
Equally disturbing is the impact that micropayments will have on the ability to find information. Search engines will have to negotiate with huge numbers content providers, and will probably charge for searches. Any content provider that does not have a relationship with a search engine will end up having their information cached (bypassing the payment system) or unindexed.
So what you're saying is that you stopped using XML and used something completely different that has a visual similarity to XML.
Hint: if it doesn't do unicode, DTDs, CDATA sections and all the other crap, its not XML.
See also Fahrenheit 451.
Hmmm. AC indeed.
Sorry, but I don't accept the proposal on which you've based the rest of your argument. A text entry box would not constitute a character in a story. Excluding the most trivial of programs, you can't interact meaningfully with a text entry box on its own, nor can it interact with the setting (the program's functionality) meaningfully on its own.
If you likened the UI as a whole to a character, I would be more inclined to to consider any following argument as potentially valid. A UI as a whole can be described as "having character", and can be seen as a character. A UI can have a personality, can interact meaningfully with a user and the setting, and can be recognisable and distinguishable from other UIs on the basis of its many traits.
A single GUI widget, by comparison, is merely a character trait. Each widget/trait has some variance, but handler enough in an of itself to be considered significant. It is many traits together that make a character.
And I think you read too much pulp fiction if you think a textbox could be a character.
Sorry ... hard cover pulp fiction on acid free paper.
I don't know about you, but I've never seem myself nor any of my friends throw away a book because of the paper its printed on. A collector may insist on a quality medium in order to preserve the work for as long as possible, or attain the best use (say, CD versus tape for music), but this is hardly comparable to a good versus a bad UI.
Amazing what you can put into peoples' mouths. I am most assuredly not pro software patents.
As I have said in my (many) comments on this thread, there are numerous elements of software design and implementation that are well known and hence not subject to copyright or patent law (or at least shouldn't be). There are very few elements that are, of themselves, novel (I don't think Adobe's tabbed toolbars are particularly novel), and this is a core reason for my disagreeing with the concept of software patents.
But a GUI as a whole is not, in most applications, merely a sum of its parts. It requires a major investment in time, resources and testing to discover a presentation format that is functional and aesthetically pleasing, a series of interactions that is intuitive and simple, yet flexible enough for comprehensive coverage of the available functionality and accessible enough for novices and advanced users alike.
Corporations like Apple, Microsoft and Adobe pour millions into UI design R&D, and they have a legitimate expectation that this investment, like their software offerings as whole, are afforded some degree of protection -- not over the elements that make up their UI, but over the UI as a cohesive whole.
Copyright protects idea and expression, but its protection of idea is very limited. The expression of the idea changes in a translation, or in an adaption to screen or to theatre, but all of these are derivations protected by copyright, because they express the same idea.
When looking at an idea in terms of copyright, you have to be very specific. A "space ship" is not an idea, it is a well known concept. A space ship named "Enterprise NCC 1701-D" with a particular look and means of functioning, a purpose and a recognisable crew, on the other hand, is an idea that is covered by Copyright.
It is true that over time ideas can become well known concepts, and lose their novelty and uniqueness that make the valuable to a copyright holder. This is a development of genre, and the first contribution of a work to the public domain.
When I said that copyright is specifically intended to protect ideas, I meant just that. It does not just protect a single printed book, or even all impressions of that book. It also protects translations, adaptions, grammatical corrections, and future works that, by virtue of their content, could be considered an extention to (and hence derivation of) the work.
In the end it comes down to a court deciding whether one work is substantively similar to another, as you say.
Quite easily: "John Mills goes to Hogwarts", or "John Mills goes to Wizard School" and a critic in a newspaper (e-zine, the front cover, whatever) mentions its similarity to Harry Potter.
The more you change, the less of a problem you have. Writing a book about another child attending Hogwarts and including all the "supporting cast and crew" (excluding Potter and closest friends) would be a problem. Creating your own wizarding school with its own traditions and traits is more than likely creating a new story in the same genre.
As I've pointed out in other comments, trademark law does not protect your character's personality, quirks, or any distinguishing feature that makes him/her valuable. Trademark law only protects the character's name.
Copyright law it phrased as the protection of a specific expression of an idea, and encompasses both idea and expression. A work could infringe on a copyright if it is substantively similar, even though it may use different names and slightly varied descriptions.
Trademark law is a more powerful tool than copyright law, because it is easier to demonstrate infringement (and damage). But the trademark in question doesn't extend to cover the purple dinosaur itself ... just the name.
A very specific balance with very large grey areas. In general a patent covers function, copyright covers form, and trademark covers names. But where US law will allow patenting of a novel GUI idiom/concept, other legal systems may not accept a patent, and protection will be afforded by graphic design or even copyright law.
The story in question is a judgement (an interpretation of the law), not a new law. Existing law quite clearly disallows derivative works, including many forms of "fan fiction". My other comments go into more depth on this. Fan fiction that uses core characters (in particular) will be a copyright infringement!
The problem is to strike a balance between letting the author create and profit from an idea (without third parties, including fanfic authors, possibly detracting from that idea or drawing attention to their works instead), and allowing that work to be derived and eventually enter the public domain in a timely fashion.
I take it you haven't read this comment. :)
Pah! The most intelligent response I've had so far, and you post as AC. Weenie ;p
I agree. But I'm not sure of the courts' interpretation of whether a particular GUI element is functional or creative. The case law you refer to sounds is very interesting, I will go an read up on it.
One of the complications here is that the US patent system allows for patenting of GUI element (e.g. Adobe's tabbed tool trays), while in other systems this is a grey area that is generally assumed (to some extent) to fall under Copyright law. As I said in another post, there has to be damage in order to sue for (Copyright) infringement, and generally damage (for copying GUI elements) will only occur when the copier is creating a competing product, in which event the case law you cite will probably have effect.
It could, but this is unlikely. Take for example restraints of trade: even if you are restrained from using any knowledge you gained during the course of an employment, you are not restrained from using general knowledge applicable in your field of expertise.
In software there is a body of knowledge that encompasses a suitable approach to solving a problem; and that body of knowledge includes standard practices for GUI design.
I think in this case (as in so many others) the devil is in the details.