nep.pgelhausen@AMES-VMSB.ARPA (10/23/85)
> Ok, what if I wrote an exact copy of pacman and then gave it away. Would > anyone be able to sue me? They would be able, but unlikely unless you were selling it, or distribution of your version could be proved to be cutting in on their profits. -Richard Hartman max.hartman@ames-vmsb ------
kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth) (10/24/85)
If you copied pac man and gave it away, they can still sue you and sometimes
they do. There are various precedents in the copyright laws where people
were fined substantial (c 10,000 dollar) amounts for photocopying literary
works and posting the copies on bulletin boards. (Watch out Dave Berry
posters...) I am not sure just what has happened in the software world yet.
--
Kurt Guntheroth
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!kurtsean@ukma.UUCP (Sean Casey) (10/25/85)
In article <987@vax2.fluke.UUCP> kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth) writes: >If you copied pac man and gave it away, they can still sue you and sometimes >they do. There are various precedents in the copyright laws where people >were fined substantial (c 10,000 dollar) amounts for photocopying literary >works and posting the copies on bulletin boards. (Watch out Dave Berry >posters...) I am not sure just what has happened in the software world yet. I'm not talking about photocopying or otherwise ripping off a legitimate copy. I'm talking about writing a program from scratch that behaves almost exactly like a copyrighted program and then placing my program in the public domain. Like if I wrote an MSDOS that was 100% compatable and then said hey world you can have it for free. Sean -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sean Casey UUCP: sean@ukma.UUCP or 915 Patterson Office Tower {cbosgd,anlams,hasmed}!ukma!sean University of Kentucky ARPA: ukma!sean@ANL-MCS.ARPA Lexington, Ky. 40506-0027 BITNET: sean@UKMA.BITNET -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth) (10/30/85)
If you are talking about cloning -- writing from scratch an exact copy, you
can still get into trouble. In the Pacman example, for instance, the pac
man character can be copyrighted. Now you can duplicate the game, but if
your player token looks loke a little round ball with a bug mouth, you may
be sued for stealing the character, not the game. In the MSDOS example,
remember what happened to Eagle(?) computers when they tried to duplicate the
ROM BIOS for MSDOS. Some of the engineers had SEEN listings of the IBM BIOS
so they got sued for copying even though the copy was not exact and had been
substantially written from scratch. (There is a company who now makes a
living selling a compatible BIOS written from scratch by engineers who NEVER
have LOOKED at the IBM BIOS.)
I would have said it is possible to clone most commercial products without
fear up until now, because you were cloning the function and not copying the
program. Maybe the visual imagry of the Mac makes it enough like a work of
art (in the legal, not the aesthetic sense) to make it protectable under
copyright law. Remember, the details of the case are not disclosed.
--
Kurt Guntheroth
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!kurt