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From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Europe's attempt to copyright interfaces is insane
Message-ID: <7094:Apr1422:22:5690@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 14 Apr 90 22:22:56 GMT
References: <1093@goofy.UUCP> <2148@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <4238:Apr1500:57:5390@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <1990Apr14.042027.18553@intercon.com>
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
Lines: 28

In article <1990Apr14.042027.18553@intercon.com> ooblick@intercon.com (Mikki Barry) writes:
> 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.
> There are, in fact, patents on processes.  

None of which have (to my knowledge) been tested in court. As patent law
explicitly forbids patents on methods, I'm quite sure that algorithm
patents will die as soon as they're challenged.

  [ copyrights ]

Through some loopholes in copyright law, a copyright can be preserved
for as long as there are people around to keep it going. Anyway, the
minimum copyright duration of 50 years is way too long for protecting
``innovation,'' though it's perfectly appropriate for protecting the
form of a work.

> >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.

Yeah. What's wrong with the Berne Convention, I wonder?

---Dan