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From: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: IEEE Computer article on software legalities
Message-ID: <2081@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Aug-83 13:16:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.2081
Posted: Wed Aug 24 13:16:32 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Aug-83 14:00:01 EDT
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 11

Followers of the discussion on legal protection of software will be interested
in an up-to-date article on the matter in the August 1983 issue of IEEE
Computer (publ. by the IEEE Computer Society).  The article, by a lawyer with
a firm that has done a lot of work in the area, says, among other things, that
software IS patentable, that copyright doesn't provide much protection,
trade secret treatment doesn't either, and that trademarks should have more
attention paid to them.  It also answers a lot of questions asked in this
group (e.g. reverse-engineering a program is indeed fine, but the screen
layout may be copyrighted.  I believe Intel also copyrighted the 8086
instruction set mnemonics, but I'm not sure if it got them anywhere).
  p. rowley, U. Toronto   utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr