EU Advocate General: 'Functionalities Of A Computer Program Cannot Be Protected By Copyright'
from the but-what-about-patents? dept
Back in September, Techdirt wrote about an important case that had been passed up to the European Court of Justice. It raised some key questions about creating software that was interoperable with an existing program � whether, for example, the features of the latter were in some sense copyrightable.Although the full Court decision won't be out until next year, one of the Court of Justice's Advocates General (there are eight of them, "to present opinions on the cases brought before the Court") has published his views on the case [pdf]:
In the first place, with regard to the functionality of a computer program, the Advocate General defines it as the set of possibilities offered by a computer system � in other words, the service which the user expects from it.That seems like common sense: the functionality of a program is just something that it can do, which is itself just an idea. The Advocate General then goes on to make a very important point:
Starting from that premiss, the Advocate General considers that the functionalities of a computer program are not eligible, as such, for copyright protection. The functionalities of a computer program are in fact dictated by a specific and limited purpose. In this, they are similar to ideas. That is why there may be a number of computer programs offering the same functionalities.
if it were accepted that a functionality of a computer program can be protected as such, that would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.The thing is, exactly the same could be said about software patents too. One of the problems with them is that they often concern basic programming techniques, and as such give the patent holder a monopoly on those key ideas. It's why copyright � which protects the implementation of ideas � is more appropriate than patents, since it does not block alternative ways of creating the same effect. It's also why markets like smartphones have turned into impenetrable patent thickets.
This is not the final judgment of the European Court of Justice, although the Advocate General's opinion does carry considerable weight. Moreover, even the European Court of Justice does not decide the case definitively, but merely offers its interpretation of European law. It is ultimately down to the national court in the UK to use that ruling to make its own judgment. So there's still a long way to go before this case and the issues that it raises are settled. But it's definitely off to a good start with this opinion: had the Advocate General opined differently, creating interoperable programs in Europe would have started to look a much more perilous � and expensive � undertaking.
It's also worth noting that there is a very similar case going through the courts in the US: Oracle has accused Google of infringing on its Java copyrights in much the same way that SAS accused WPL in Europe. It will be interesting to see whether the US judge agrees with the Advocate General's analysis.
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Filed Under: copyright, eu, functionality, ideas, software
Companies: sas, world programming
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Disaster
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"Use of a static variable used to hold information on the cycle count of a particular operation. Specifically in this case, the number of posts related to democrats and/or republican bullshit on yahoo news user comments fields."
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Re:
I have two patents that might be infringed. First, a business method patent on rigging elections. Second, a patent on the technical means of "assisting" voting machines in producing the correct results.
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Re:
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Form Follows Function
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Re: Form Follows Function
For example in C the following all accomplish the same thing:
Example 1:
i++;
Example 2:
i == i + 1;
Example 3;
x == i++;
i == x;
Example 4;
x == i;
x++;
i == z;
etc...
That is why software is copyrightable, because there are so many ways to do things it's obvious when someone actually copies your code.
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Re: Re: Form Follows Function
Also a programmer would know that x = i++ would assign i to x, and then increase i by one, then i = x would restore i to the previous value. This is different from ++i where the increment is done before the assignment.
And the last one won't accomplish what you want, since the value of z is unrelated.
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Re: Re: Form Follows Function
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Re: Re: Form Follows Function
Those things are like metatags for a specific call in the parser and they all will produce the same low level code and thus be the same if you don't have the source code to show that they were written differently.
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Re: Re: Form Follows Function
In your examples, example 3 is direct infringement against Example 1 because it contains an exact copy of it. Also example 4 is infringement because it copies the core functionality (++) being patented.
Btw, even if what you said holds, there is apparently more than 5 developer in the world that needs some way to increment a variable...
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Re: many many different ways of doing the same thing
I ask because a friend recently introduced me to geometric algebra, which allows for a different way of formulating such things as complex numbers and quaternions. Does that mean that mathematics is copyrightable?
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Copyright and Patent Everything
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Re: Copyright and Patent Everything
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Re: Re: Copyright and Patent Everything
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Tas Souvenir Murah
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