Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!biivax.dp.beckman.com!dahosek From: dahosek@biivax.dp.beckman.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal Subject: Re: Copyrighting software Message-ID: <1991May10.124841.293@biivax.dp.beckman.com> Date: 10 May 91 19:48:40 GMT References: <1991May8.150708.29420@cs.odu.edu> <24272@dice.la.locus.com> Distribution: usa Organization: Beckman Instruments, Inc. Lines: 73 In article <24272@dice.la.locus.com>, jfr@locus.com (Jon Rosen) writes: > 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. Actually under the most recent Geneva copyright convention, the notice isn't actually required. However, for maximum international protection, the notice Copyright should appear. (c) has no legal status and circled-C is only valid in those countries which also subscribe to the abovementioned copyright convention. > 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. Bzzt. Almost right. Registration of the copyright is ONLY necessary to file a suit. Furthermore, the registration may take place AFTER the infringement, but before the suit is filed. i.e., if Mr. Rosen were to start selling copies of this note (just because it doesn't carry a notice doesn't mean that it's not copyrighted) that I'm writing, I could register it tomorrow and file a case against him after the registration is completed. Note, however, that US courts do not allow punitive damages in copyright infringement cases, only actual damages, so I would have to demonstrate that he actually caused me to lose money by such a publication of this note to collect any money. At best, I could keep him from further publication. Also, putting a copyright notice in a prominent place on the work will help your case should you feel the need to litigate since the defendent would not be able to claim ignorance of the copyright. For those of you looking for legal backing of this, the case _Salinger vs. Random House_ involved many of these points. The documents in question, incidentally, were publicly available nonpublished letters in the collections of a University library. Incidentally, the license agreement that I have on my relatively new Borland software has as a condition that any software written using their compilers and distributed bear a copyright notice, so inclusion of a copyright notice in the case of, say a Turbo Pascal program, is more a matter of fulfilling the Borland license than anything involving copyright law. -dh -- Don Hosek // Quixote Digital Typography 714-625-0147 dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu On contract to Beckman Instruments 714-961-4562 dahosek@beckman.com