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From: kre@ucbvax.ARPA (Robert Elz)
Newsgroups: net.crypt
Subject: Re: RSA cryptographic algorithm patented?
Message-ID: <9388@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 27-Jul-85 05:15:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9388
Posted: Sat Jul 27 05:15:06 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jul-85 09:42:46 EDT
References: <9028@ucbvax.ARPA> <490@calmasd.UUCP>, <1975@ukma.UUCP> <5828@utzoo.UUCP>
Followup-To: net.legal
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 19
Summary: Undoing a misstatement ("copyright", and what it protects)

In article <5828@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
> Copyrights (e.g. the one on the Unix manual) protect the form in which
> concepts are expressed, and so you can re-use the concepts *provided*
> you express them differently.  A book which is word-for-word identical to
> "Lord of the Rings" is a copyright infringement even if you come up with
> it completely independently.  But you can re-express the same ideas without
> any problem.

In a word, this is nonsense.  Copyright protects against exactly what the
name implies - copying.  Recreating the work independantly is not a breach
of copyright.  However, as with Henry's example of trade secrets and the
Unix kernel, trying to convince anyone that you just happened to rewrite
"Lord of the Rings" word for word out of your own mind is not likely to
an easy task to accomplish.

Robert Elz					ucbvax!kre

ps: this discussion belongs in net.legal, I have added a followup-to
to force any future followups to that group alone.