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What impact will this have in the US? | 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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