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EU Court of Justice: No Copyright on Computer Functionality or Computer Languages ~pj
Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:02 AM EDT

This is awesome. The EU Court of justice has just ruled in SAS v. WPL, that you can't copyright a computer language or computer functionality. From the press release [PDF] from the EU Court of Justice:
The Court recalls, first, that the Directive on the legal protection of computer programs extends copyright protection to the expression in any form of an intellectual creation of the author of a computer program. However, ideas and principles which underlie any element of a computer program, including those which underlie its interfaces, are not protected by copyright under that directive.

Thus, only the expression of those ideas and principles is protected by copyright. The object of the protection conferred by Directive 91/250 is the expression in any form of a computer program, such as the source code and the object code, which permits reproduction in different computer languages. On the basis of those considerations, the Court holds that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression. Accordingly, they do not enjoy copyright protection.

The decision states why:
"As the Advocate General states in point 57 of his Opinion, to accept that the functionality of a computer program can be protected by copyright would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development."
How refreshing. That's how it's supposed to be in the US, too, although Oracle is trying to spread copyright further than it has traditionally gone, to cover the structure, sequence and organization of APIs. Obviously, this is a European case, and the US is a different jurisdiction, and there are some differences in the fact patterns, but this EU case was about APIs. And Oracle had earlier tried to use [text, document #859] the ECJ Advocate General's view on the case to argue that APIs might be copyright protectable.

If you note the interesting conversation here on Google+, you'll see there are some very close matches.

We await the jury verdict in the copyright phase of Oracle v. Google now. Today is the second day of jury deliberations, and I'll keep you posted with any news.

Jan Wildeboer was first with the news:

This case (SAS v WPL) has a lot in common with the Oracle v Google case in the US.

The very short form: WPL created a re-implementation of the SAS Language, using the original documentation of SAS and a freebie version for personal and educational use. SAS claimed they thus infringed on copyright etc.

Seems SAS lost big time.

In the Google+ discussion, attorney Carlo Piana notes this in response to a comment noting some differences between this case and the Oracle case:
The similarities of the two cases are well beyond what transpires from the judgement (I have read the referral and the UK decision). In both cases a copyright infringement was alleged because of the verbatim copies of the API and of the programming language. The UK court took a radical approach denying all of that (to me quite correctly).

In my reading, despite the different route taken (the relevant Java source code is publicly available through the Harmony and OpenJDK implementations, whereas according to the referral WPL did not have any access to the source code), this is a point that puts the two cases in close connection with each other. Only the applicable law is different, as the USA fair use doctrine is not a 1 to 1 match with the exceptions in the EU Software Directive.

If anything, SAS is a more telling case, since WPL has openly made a drop-in replacement of SAS's program, which was able to read/write files in "proprietary" formats and execute routines in "proprietary" language. Conversely, AFAICT, Dalvik is a non compatible reimplementation of Java with a considerable number of extensions and departures.

Here's the full press release from the EU Court of Justice, as text:
Court of Justice of the European Union
PRESS RELEASE No 53/12
Luxembourg, 2 May 2012

Judgment in Case C-406/10

SAS Institute Inc. v World Programming Ltd

The functionality of a computer program and the programming language
cannot be protected by copyright

The purchaser of a licence for a program is entitled, as a rule, to observe, study or test its functioning so as to determine the ideas and principles which underlie that program

SAS Institute Inc. has developed the SAS System, an integrated set of programs which enables users to carry out data processing and analysis tasks, in particular statistical analysis. The core component of the SAS System is called Base SAS. It enables users to write and execute application programs (also known as ‘scripts’) written in the SAS programming language for data processing.

World Programming Ltd (WPL) perceived that there was a market demand for alternative software capable of executing application programs written in the SAS Language. WPL therefore produced the World Programming System (WPS). The latter emulates functionalities of the SAS components to a large extent in that, with a few minor exceptions, WPL attempted to ensure that the same inputs would produce the same outputs. This would enable users of the SAS System to run the scripts which they have developed for use with the SAS System on WPS.

In order to produce the WPS program, WPL lawfully acquired copies of the Learning Edition of the SAS System, which were supplied under licences limiting the rights of the licensee to non- production purposes. WPL used and studied those programs in order to understand their functioning but there is nothing to suggest that WPL had access to or copied the source code of the SAS components.

SAS Institute brought an action before the High Court in the UK, accusing WPL of having copied the SAS System manuals and components, thus infringing its copyright and the terms of the Learning Edition licence. In that context, the High Court has put questions to the Court of Justice regarding the scope of the legal protection conferred by EU law on computer programs and, in particular, whether that protection extends to programming functionality and language.

The Court recalls, first, that the Directive on the legal protection of computer programs1 extends copyright protection to the expression in any form of an intellectual creation of the author of a computer program.1 However, ideas and principles which underlie any element of a computer program, including those which underlie its interfaces, are not protected by copyright under that directive.

Thus, only the expression of those ideas and principles is protected by copyright. The object of the protection conferred by Directive 91/250 is the expression in any form of a computer program, such as the source code and the object code, which permits reproduction in different computer languages. On the basis of those considerations, the Court holds that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression. Accordingly, they do not enjoy copyright protection.

To accept that the functionality of a computer program can be protected by copyright would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.

In that context, the Court states that if a third party were to procure the part of the source code or object code relating to the programming language or to the format of data files used in a computer program, and if that party were to create, with the aid of that code, similar elements in its own computer program, that conduct would be liable to be prohibited by the author of the program. In the present case, it is apparent from the explanations of the national court that WPL did not have access to the source code of SAS Institute’s program and did not carry out any decompilation of the object code of that program. It was only by means of observing, studying and testing the behaviour of SAS Institute’s program that WPL reproduced the functionality of that program by using the same programming language and the same format of data files.

Second, the Court observes that, according to the Directive, the purchaser of a software licence has the right to observe, study or test the functioning of that software in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the program. Any contractual provisions contrary to that right are null and void. Furthermore, the determination of those ideas and principles may be carried out within the framework of the acts permitted by the licence.

Consequently, the owner of the copyright in a computer program may not prevent, by relying on the licensing agreement, the purchaser of that licence from observing, studying or testing the functioning of that program so as to determine the ideas and principles which underlie all the elements of the program in the case where the purchaser carries out acts covered by that licence and the acts of loading and running necessary for the use of the program on condition that that purchaser does not infringe the exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright in that program.

In addition, according to the Court, there is no copyright infringement where, as in the present case, the lawful acquirer of the licence did not have access to the source code of the computer program but merely studied, observed and tested that program in order to reproduce its functionality in a second program.

Lastly, the Court holds that the reproduction, in a computer program or a user manual for that program, of certain elements described in the user manual for another computer program protected by copyright is capable of constituting an infringement of the copyright in the latter manual if that reproduction constitutes the expression of the intellectual creation of the author of the manual.

In this respect, the Court takes the view that, in the present case, the keywords, syntax, commands and combinations of commands, options, defaults and iterations consist of words, figures or mathematical concepts, considered in isolation, are not, as such, an intellectual creation of the author of that program. It is only through the choice, sequence and combination of those words, figures or mathematical concepts that the author expresses his creativity in an original manner.

It is for the national court to ascertain whether the reproduction alleged in the main proceedings constitutes the expression of the intellectual creation of the author of the user manual for the computer program protected by copyright.

NOTE: A reference for a preliminary ruling allows the courts and tribunals of the Member States, in disputes which have been brought before them, to refer questions to the Court of Justice about the interpretation of European Union law or the validity of a European Union act. The Court of Justice does not decide the dispute itself. It is for the national court or tribunal to dispose of the case in accordance with the Court’s decision, which is similarly binding on other national courts or tribunals before which a similar issue is raised. Unofficial document for media use, not binding on the Court of Justice. The full text of the judgment is published on the CURIA website on the day of delivery.

_________________
1 Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs (OJ 1991 L 122, p. 42).

2 Case C-393/09 Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace.


  


EU Court of Justice: No Copyright on Computer Functionality or Computer Languages ~pj | 359 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
News Picks
Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:06 AM EDT
Please make links clickable

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections here
Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:07 AM EDT
Corrections here

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off topic
Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:07 AM EDT
Please make links clickable

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes transcribing
Authored by: feldegast on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:12 AM EDT
Thank you for your support

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

EU Court of Justice: No Copyright on Computer Functionality or Computer Languages ~pj
Authored by: al_dunsmuir on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:12 AM EDT
Oracle should not be surprised, and should be happy. After all, their database
products are an implementation of the SQL standard based on research from
others.

Oh wait, you say...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Tweets from the courtroom
Authored by: feldegast on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:13 AM EDT
https://twitter.com/#!/Feldegast

- --
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2012 and released under the Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

including those which underlie its interfaces
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:45 AM EDT
Which means that API's are not protected by copyright in Europe

[ Reply to This | # ]

Jusrisdictional issues.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 09:47 AM EDT
"Obviously, this is a European case, and the US is a
different jurisdiction" - someone might want to let that
bonehead judge in Seattle know :-)

You know, the judge who placed a restraining order on
Mototola Mobility from enforcing a perfectly legal order from
a foreign court in a foreign jurisdiction.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Impact for dynamic linking to GPL code in EU?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 10:16 AM EDT
The question if dynamic linking to a work (in the case where no real portion of
the work is included in the linked work) creates a derivative work has been a
bit controversial. People often talk about degree of intimacy, if the
interfaces used were intended to be public, etc. A balanced debate usually
comes down to a statement that a court might or might not endorse the reasoning
of software engineers.

Does this change that picture in affected jurisdictions?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Structure Sequence and Organisation
Authored by: TJ on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 10:25 AM EDT

Interesting determination regarding the documentation:

Lastly, the Court holds that the reproduction, in a computer program or a user manual for that program, of certain elements described in the user manual for another computer program protected by copyright is capable of constituting an infringement of the copyright in the latter manual if that reproduction constitutes the expression of the intellectual creation of the author of the manual.
In this respect, the Court takes the view that, in the present case, the keywords, syntax, commands and combinations of commands, options, defaults and iterations consist of words, figures or mathematical concepts, considered in isolation, are not, as such, an intellectual creation of the author of that program. It is only through the choice, sequence and combination of those words, figures or mathematical concepts that the author expresses his creativity in an original manner.

[ Reply to This | # ]

What impact will this have in the US?
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 10:44 AM EDT
The US is a signatory of the Berne Convention, so I wonder if that comes into
play at all.

---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

Jurisdiction of the EU Court of Justice
Authored by: WWWombat on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 10:54 AM EDT
Note that this isn't a case where the EU court trumps
individual national courts - the EU Court is not acting like
a super-supreme court here.

The case was actually taken to the High Court of Justice in
the UK, and that the EU Court of Justice has been asked for
advice, based on "European Law". The PDF press release makes
it clear that EU court does not decide the dispute, and that
it is for the national court to make the decision "in
accordance" with the court's decision.

But, if I have it correctly, the UK isn't strictly subject
to this notion of "European Law" - but is subject to its own
national laws. Those laws are *meant* to be written in
harmony with the European ones, but aren't always perfectly
so.

This EU decision is thus "binding" on all individual nations
in the EU, but only to the extent that their sovereign laws
match up to the EU "ideal".

I suspect that the UK High Court still has to verify that
the EU decision matches up with UK law before turning it
into a concrete decision.

And then there's still the court of appeal, and the supreme
court after that...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Matlab and Octave (other clones)
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 12:09 PM EDT
Similar to this SAS case, Octave and other programs like Scilab are considered clones of Mathworks' Matlab. That is all these applications can run Matlab's interpreted language to provide the same result as using Matlab and read Matlab's file formats.

Definitely an interesting can of worms that has been opened in the US.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Let's Hope For A Trade War
Authored by: sproggit on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 01:42 PM EDT
With any luck, some of the numpties at the European Commission will realise
(perhaps too late) that the current strategy being pursued by the US
Administration is going to totally disadvantage EU businesses, which will in
turn harm profits, which will in turn hit tax revenues.

This will likely come about when US Companies get even more aggressive in
asserting their [frequently ludicrous] software patents in Europe. At that point
the EU will realise that whilst Europe failed to take a strong enough stand
early enough, US companies have done the "IP Gold Rush" and staked
loose and nebulous patent claims all across the technology landscape, such that
it's impossible for outsiders to come to the table with an innovation that
doesn't infringe on someone else's patent[s].

At that point the EU will realise that the US are leveraging this insane policy
and the WTO to block overseas competition.

Once they realise that the software industry has morphed from a "software
purchase" model, to a "software license" model, to a "right
to pay" [but without necessarily getting anything in return] model.

It's all just madness...

[ Reply to This | # ]

we need a ruling on the proper language
Authored by: vb on Wednesday, May 02 2012 @ 06:30 PM EDT

Thus far we have...

"ideas and principles"
"methods and concepts"
"structure, sequence and organization"

...to me it's all "toe-MAY-toe" vs "toe-MAH-toe", but why
can't the legal system decide that they are all the same and which one to use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

EU Court of Justice: No Copyright on Computer Functionality or Computer Languages ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 07:12 AM EDT

Important quote:

To accept that the functionality of a computer program can be protected by copyright would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.

Well, isn't the fundamental concept of patents the monopolisation of ideas?

[ Reply to This | # ]

European countries
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 10:00 AM EDT
Terms in an Eula which are against the law are not enforcable in many European
countries, even if you agreed to the Eula.
So a software company can not circumvent the law by including terms in the Eula
whcih are against the law.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Lotus v. Borland more on point
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 10:53 AM EDT

I see that a few people have cited Sega v. Accolade. I would suggest that the closest US case Supreme Court case is actually Lotus v. Borland. The underlying facts are that Borland emulated the macro language used in Lotus' spreadsheet and ended up getting sued in a district court Mass. The district court held that the macro language was protectable under copyright law. On appeal, the First Circuit Court of appeals reversed, and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court split 4-4 (Justice Stephens recused) which left intact the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that neither the macro language nor the menu structure were protectable under copyright law.

The Supreme Court split means that the issue is unsettled under US law. I've noticed that many sources, including the wikipedia article on the case neglect to mention that state of affairs. District courts in the First Circuit are obligated to follow Lotus v. Borland, but courts in other districts are not so obligated.

Of course Borland went on to author some fairly egregious license terms that purported to limit the types of software you could write with their compilers before the company became completely irrelevant. Winning their own battle did not seem to make them any more sensitive to programmer/user rights.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Basic building blocks
Authored by: ghopper on Thursday, May 03 2012 @ 07:55 PM EDT
You can't copyright the basic building blocks of a language.
This is the same reason why many jurisdictions refuse to
copyright fonts and letters. If someone was able to assert
copyright on such basic building blocks, then they could
effectively control all communication.

This is just another way of looking at point 57, that "such
would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas,"
leading to stifling innovation.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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