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From: barmar@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: More on copyright
Message-ID: <1196@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 6-Mar-86 05:25:43 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1196
Posted: Thu Mar  6 05:25:43 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 08:22:08 EST
References: <1411@brl-smoke.ARPA> <2017@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: barmar@eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: MIT EECS Dept.
Lines: 38

Let me preface by warning that I am not educated in copyright law, but I
have been reading what I can about software copyright in the trade
press.

In article <2017@uwmacc.UUCP> oyster@uwmacc.UUCP writes:
>   Now for my question:  what exactly is copyrightable?  Is a language
>definition (e.g. C)?  If so, would the copyright have to *specifically*
>include said definition?

I don't think you can copyright the language itself.  Copyright
protection is intended to protect documents, not concepts.  This has of
late been defined to include computer programs and printouts/displays
(see below).  In the case of a language definition, you can copyright
the document that describes the language, and you can copyright an
implementation of a compiler, but you can't copyright the language
itself, which is an abstract concept.

>  And going even further (Apple vs DRI {GEM} & Atari vs
>Whomever {Pac-man} notwithstanding), can *any* copyrighted program be rebuilt
>from the ground up by a second party, preserving functionality, and be a
>legally viable product?  (Or is this where patents come into the picture?)

In these cases, the copyright infringement was not against the program
logic.  The complaint was that the screen displays had been copied.  In
the Pac-Man case, the settlement was that the layout of the maze and the
shapes of the players were changed.  For another example, there is
currently a game called Mouse Stampede for the Macintosh; it plays
almost exactly like the arcade game Millipede, but all the characters
were changed.  And in the GEM case, the settlement was that some icons
and window features were changed; no functionality was changed, though.

A good rule of thumb in such cases is to ask yourself whether the
potential copy looks like it was designed by looking at a photograph of
the original.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar