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From: jfr@locus.com (Jon Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Copyrighting software
Message-ID: <24272@dice.la.locus.com>
Date: 10 May 91 03:35:22 GMT
References: <1991May8.150708.29420@cs.odu.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Locus Computing Corp, Los Angeles
Lines: 107

In article <1991May8.150708.29420@cs.odu.edu> popkin@osric.cs.odu.edu (Brian N. Popkin) writes:
>
>I have currently written a turbo pascal v6.0 program that I want to
>copyright.. how should I go about this???
>
>also is there any problems with this, becuase I used some turbo units
>and functions, like dos, crt that are already copyrighted in my program??
>

First of all, if you properly include a copyright notice in your program
you should know that it is already considered copyrighted in the common
law copyright sense.  This means that you have, as of the date of your
copyright and publication (i.e., printing or display), declared the code
to be your property from that day forward.
 
However, as of the copyright law of 1976 (and its subsequent revisions),
common law copyright no longer has much use in enforcing your rights.
In order to enforce a copyright (i.e., win damages in a lawsuit for an
infringement), you must REGISTER the copyright.  This, as it happens,
is a relatively trivial process, however.  You must get a hold of a
U.S. Copyright form (contact the Federal Gov't information office in
your area or call the Office of U.S. Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights
in Washington DC), fill it out, mail it in with the appropriate amount
of dollars (I think somewhere between $50 and $100 these days) along
with a copy of your program.
 
Whoa, just a minute there, pardnuh... I don't want anyone else to
see my code (I hear you cry... :-)
 
Of course not. However, remember that copyright is protection of
PUBLISHED information so you must publish something in order to
copyright it.  This issue was brought to the attention of the
Copyright folks years ago and they came up with an interesting
solution. All you have to do to copyright a software program is
include some pages (I believe 5 from the front and 5 from the
back) of the listing of the program.  Of course, what you do here
is make sure that the first five and last five pages are mostly
irrelevent comments and maybe declarations of variables so that
the important parts of your program are not visible.
 
In addition, if you program has any important visual information
such as screen displays, reports, etc., that you want protected
as part of the "look" of the program, you need to send photos
or printouts of those too.  
 
Ultimately, once you have registered your copyright, you are
fully protected from any subsequent infringement as well as
any prior infringement dating back to the date of the common
law copyright, but you can only collect damages that are
measurable from the date of registration.  This is important
to understand if you want to enforce your copyright.  The
fact that your registration is late does NOT keep you from
filing a lawsuit, but you can only collect money from the
portion of the infringement that occurs after the actual
registration is completed.  If the infringer stops selling
the copy of your program prior to when you register, you may
get a verdict in your favor but you will get $zip in damages.
So register early if you really think there is a need.
If not, just rely on the common law copyright until you detect
a possible infringement.  Then register and collect from that
day forth.
 
Also, one more point in this long soliloquy... Enforcing your
copyright ain't easy... If the copier is doing a "real" copy,
i.e., just taking your disk and physically duplicating it,
you shouldn't have to bad a time.  However, if you want to
try an enforce "look and feel" copying, as we all know from
watching the big guys like Microsoft and Apple wallow in the
muck (as well as Ashton-Tate and FoxBase), its pretty mucky
down there.  Get a good lawyer and have a lot of money.
 
As for problems with incorporating other code that is already
copyrighted, there should be no problem if the license for
that code permits its incorporation within other code.  I
am positive that Borland's license does this.  (Pause...)
In fact I just pulled out a copy of my Turbo C (this is an
older version from about 2 years ago but I doubt it has been
changed very much) and it says:
 
 "...Programs that you write and compile using the Turbo C
  language compiler may be used, given away or sold without
  additional license or fees.  You are not required to indicate
  that your programs were developed using Turbo C or that they
  contain source code provided with Borland language products
  (toolkits)."
 
It goes on to EXCLUDE the use of the sample programs (like
MicroCalc) that are provided as educational examples of what
you can do with Turbo products, but permits you to use misc.
routines that are found in the exmamples "...as long as your
resulting programs do not substantially duplicate all or part
of a sample program in appearance or functionality."  This is
interesting since if you built a spreadsheet product from 
Turbo C or Pascal that you wrote yourself (not copying MicroCalc),
you might have a problem here, but I doubt it.
 
All in all, this means that object code may be distributed
without concern for Borland's copyright (and I believe that 
the code would be copyrightable in total)... You can NOT
distribute and copyright for yourself any of their SOURCE
code (for instance if you acquire rights to their Turbo C
run-time or one of the toolkits like the Editor or Database
toolbox).
 
Good luck!
 
Jon Rosen