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From: ooblick@intercon.com (Mikki Barry)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Europe's attempt to copyright interfaces is insane
Message-ID: <1990Apr14.042027.18553@intercon.com>
Date: 14 Apr 90 04:20:27 GMT
References: <1093@goofy.UUCP> <2148@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <4238:Apr1500:57:5390@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
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Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Sterling, VA
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In article <4238:Apr1500:57:5390@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

>You can't patent a method, whether you invented it or not. You can't
>copyright a method. But now, under the proposed copyright law for
>Europe, you'll be able to (in effect) copyright methods.

There are, in fact, patents on processes.  

>Patents last at most 17 years. Copyrights can last forever, if they're
>assigned suitably; in any case they always last at least 50 years, with
>an average of more like 100.

Copyrights extend from the life of the author plus 50 years.  If the
copyright is owned by a corporation, it lasts 75 years.  Assignment
only grants rights granted within those time periods.

>In other words, the proposed European copyright law is an obscene
>strengthening of what may already be overly strong protections.

On the other hand, another proposed European scheme would make copying
and distributing software (read pirating) absolutely ok, as long as the
original copy was purchased legally.  From this mess it may be possible
to surmise that the Europeans don't have it quite together when deciding 
on how they will deal with intellectual property.

Mikki Barry