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From: warren@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Warren Harrison)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Should software ideas be protected? (Was Re: Software Copyright Law
Keywords: European Community, copyright, reverse engineering
Message-ID: <2634@psueea.UUCP>
Date: 8 Apr 90 04:21:37 GMT
References: <1093@goofy.UUCP> <14867@s.ms.uky.edu> <1990Apr8.003410.9841@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
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Reply-To: warren@eecs.UUCP (Warren Harrison)
Organization: Portland State University, Portland, OR
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In article <1990Apr8.003410.9841@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> hes@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Henry E. Schaffer) writes:
>In article <14867@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
>
>  This whole thing bothers me very much.  It is giving software ownership
>priveleges which other owners of intellectual property do not have.
>If I buy a patented machine, I am certainly allowed to take it apart,
>to observe how it works, and to learn from it.
But you can't go any further than that, ie, make your own version
of the item, that's what patents are all about. I imagine this is
the protection the software companies desire - being able to keep
a user from copying the algorithm and using it in their own product.
Except for uses that clearly violate the spirit of the transaction
(eg, changing a size limit to a demo version of the software), I 
imagine most companies could care less about a customer using one
of their algorithms for purely personal use. However, say the customer
does use the algorithm (for purely personal use) but that they give
the resulting program source to a friend who sees the algorithm and
(without knowing the source of the algorithm) distributes it to others.
Now the company has problems. It is this chink in the current copyright
laws that are forcing companies to go the patent route. With a patent,
it is more than simply the expression that is protected, but the
actual algorithm itself (consider Quarterdeck's patent on running
text applications in windows).

The advantage of the copyright expansion is that now small developers
can afford the protection the big guys are getting anyway through
patents. This means that if *you* come up with a novel way to do
something (let's say predict exactly how long it will take to write a
system given the average weight of the programmers who will be working
on it:-), you just have to paste a copyright joe blow, 1990 on it and
your formula/algorithm is protected. The way the situation is now, it
would be (at least given the opinions expressed on the net) quite easy
to reverse engineer the code, find out the algorithm (which probably took
you years of experimentation to develop) and have a competing product
out in 6 months that sells for half what your product sells for.

A large company would file for a patent right away, and financially
break the fingers of anyone who tried to copy the formula. You'd be
reluctant to part with the $5-10K needed to do a patent search, file
for a patent (properly), etc. since you're not in the business to
start with and aren't sure how the program will sell, so you'd
probably settle for free copyright protection and hope no one steals
your idea until you can get the capital together to protect it better.

Another problem with patents is that even if you came up with the
formula independently, the big company could "break your fingers",
with a copyright they'd have to prove you got it from reverse engineering
the code.

Me, I'm for anything that A) makes small guys competitive with the
big companies and B) reduces the incentive for companies to patent
things since then it nails you if you come up with the algorithms,
etc, independently.
>
>--henry schaffer
==========================================================================
Warren Harrison                                          warren@cs.pdx.edu
Department of Computer Science                                503/725-3108
Portland State University