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From: eager@amd.UUCP (Mike Eager)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: Re: Protection of ideas?
Message-ID: <224@amd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Aug-84 21:18:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: amd.224
Posted: Fri Aug 24 21:18:06 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Aug-84 07:54:21 EDT
References: <482@ames.UUCP> <117@scc.UUCP>
Organization: AMD, Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 23

> ****
> 
> 	I phoned our company lawyer to make sure, but 492@.ames is correct,
> the law does not protect ideas.   Trying to copyright an idea 
> is an especially bad idea.   Say you write a useful program in
> Pascal or F77.  It is easy to translate that program into C.
> If someone translates your program to C and sells it, tough luck on
> you.  Anything that is copyrighted must also be published and so
> anyone can see it.  
> 
Please call the company lawyer again!!  What is described here is infringement 
of copyright, which prohibits the production (beyond reasonable use) of
any COPY or DERIVED WORK.  Clearly, a TRANSLATION of your program from
Pascal to C is production of a derived work, and if the original was 
copyrighted, the translation is unauthorized.

If, on the other hand, you look at what a program does (e.g., read the
user manual or advertising literature), and write another
program to do the same thing, that is not copyright infringement.  The 
new program may use the novel ideas of the first, which cannot be
copyrighted, but there is no copy involved.

-- Mike Eager  (amd!eager)