Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!johnl From: johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Copyrighting programs based on PD may be ruled invalid Summary: No big deal. Message-ID: <2738@ima.ima.isc.com> Date: 5 Oct 88 15:45:39 GMT References: Reply-To: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) Organization: Not much Lines: 29 In article W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (Keith Petersen) writes: >> "In copyrights and patents, if there is prior art, it has to be reported >> at submission", said Bob Frankenberg, group general manager for the >> information systems group at HP. "Prior art, whether protected or in >> the public domain, can make your patent or copyright invalid." > >This is an interesting turn of events. If this is upheld by the court >it could invalidate the copyrights of all shareware and commercial >programs which contain a substantial amount of public domain code. When you register a copyright there is a place on the form where they ask about previous work on which the current work is based. You have to identify what is new and what is pre-existing. It is entirely legitimate to copyright something based partially or entirely based on previous work, even public domain previous work, so long as there is appreciable new creative work. The copyright protects only the new stuff, not the old. To address the original question, if Apple was foolish enough to copyright their screens and claim that they were 100% new, they could indeed be in trouble. If they admitted that they were derived from Xerox's work, their copyright is probably entirely secure. If you're interested, see "The Legal Guide to Computer Software Protection" by Thorne Harris III, published by Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-528365-5. -- John R. Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238-0349, +1 617 492 3869 { bbn | think | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something Rome fell, Babylon fell, Scarsdale will have its turn. -G. B. Shaw