Copyright doesn't do the whole job, because it only protects against copying. If I figure out the process and write my own code to do it, without copying yours, you can't win a copyright case even if my code's all but identical to yours (see SCO v. IBM and the infamous errno.h file for one example). And "bug-free code" isn't a high hurdle. It's only what's expected of any competent developer. It's the algorithm behind the code that's the hard part to come up with, and that's not protected by copyright at all (see the idea vs. expression dichotomy).

The problem is that the pro-patent people handwave away the whole question of whether the algorithm's sufficiently novel and non-obvious to warrant protection, trying to claim that if nobody did it before then it must be non-obvious. But if that were the case then there'd be no need for patent law to specify "novel and non-obvious".

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• Well, yes - Authored by: scav on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 04:13 AM EDT