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From: keld@diku.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Re: Copyright notices (was: Shareware? Hah!)
Message-ID: <3689@diku.dk>
Date: 28 Feb 88 14:34:31 GMT
References: <4815@ihlpg.ATT.COM> <3343@killer.UUCP> <2608@gryphon.CTS.COM> <333@esquire.UUCP> <22977@brunix.UUCP> <21023@bbn.COM> <147@bdt.UUCP>
Organization: DIKU, U of Copenhagen, DK
Lines: 57

In article <147@bdt.UUCP> david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes:

>Copyright notice or no copyright notice, in my experience it's very
>difficult to enforce outside the US and Canada.

Well, it should not be so. And there is a very big difference between
USA and Canada with respect to copyright, as Canada has signed the
international Berner convention on copyright, and USA has not.
Most of Europe has ratified the Berner convention too, so it should
be as easy to get your rights respected in Germany (BRD) as in Canada.

In Berner Union countries it is not required to have a copyright notice
on your work, to enjoy copyright protection.

>There was a company in Germany that started to produce MT C-Shell with
>their own manual, diskettes, and packaging.  German authorities informed
>me that this is perfectly *legal* in Germany, becuase you can't copyright
>anything but "works of art"; and software isn't in this category.

Well, it is the common theory within Berner Union experts that 
software *is* protected by the international copyright convention,
this has been discussed a lot of times in these circles, and in
other international legal circles discussion the protection of
software rights.

The problem is that there have not been that many cases to settle the
situation. I know that there is proposal to the Danish copyright
law which explicitely states software as covered by copyright,
and they justify this as just a codification of current state.

To enjoy copyright protection, the "work of art" should be "published"
and the work should be of a certain "work height" to be intellectual
property worth being protected. It is assumed that almost all 
software has the sufficient intelligence put into it for it to be
protected. Not protected is very trivial programs which everybody
with just a common knowledge of the issue could write. I think
things like AT&T's "true" program will fall in this category,
and even more complicated things too:-). I do not think the
software you mentioned falls into this category.

>The only illegal act would be if they were claiming they were selling
>"original" factory goods.  As long as they say they are selling copies,
>it's legal in Germany.   Even if they are breaking the law, all we could
>do is attempt to get a court order to force them to stop selling.

It should be enough to go to the police. But then it seems that the
police did not know the legal status. Did you talk to a copyright
lawyer?

>The best solution turned out to be getting a real legit. distributor
>in Germany; and let the competition of a supported product for less 
>money shut them down (which it did, I think).  I don't know if the
>legal issues above are "correct", but that's what happened to us.

When was it?

Keld Simonsen, U of Copenhagen     keld@diku.dk   uunet!diku!keld