barry@ames.UUCP (Ken Barry) (08/19/84)
[*************=8>:) (snort)] > Lauren Weinstein: > idea, property, and personal rights are protected by law > in any case. The idea rights of the programming on cable and radio > transmission systems are certainly worth the same protections as > we would give any more "physical" items. It is silly to say > that something cannot be protected simply because "you can't touch it." Not to pick on Lauren, but I sometimes see some confusion in this discussion about the protection of "ideas" under the law. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. My understanding, however, is that the law does *not* protect ideas, but only specific implementations or expressions of ideas. Nor is this an oversight; the exclusion of ideas is intentional. The only way to protect an idea is to keep it a secret. For example, if I were to invent a time machine, I could get a patent on the device I created, and have legal protection against others copying (or nearly copying) my device without my permission. I could not, however, get a patent on the *idea* of time travel, nor exclusive rights to the physical principles by which my machine operated. Others would have a perfect right to build and use time machines, as long as they used a method not protected by my patent. And similarly for copyright: Larry Niven can copyright RINGWORLD, but could not copyright the *idea* of a ring-shaped world even if he'd originated it. The examples were chosen for clarity. There are cases (programming algorithms come to mind) where the distinction between 'idea' and 'expression- of-idea' is quite unclear. But I believe my statement of the legal principle is correct. Corrections and/or amplifications from those more knowledgeable than myself are welcomed. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Electric Avenue: {dual,hao,menlo70,hplabs}!ames!barry
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (08/19/84)
**** I phoned our company lawyer to make sure, but 492@.ames is correct, the law does not protect ideas. Trying to copyright an idea is an especially bad idea. Say you write a useful program in Pascal or F77. It is easy to translate that program into C. If someone translates your program to C and sells it, tough luck on you. Anything that is copyrighted must also be published and so anyone can see it. Though there is no "one best way" to protect software, generally "trade secret" is the best way. People cannot steal something if they do not know how it works. One of the reasons that many companies have silly security precautions that people only obey when it is convenient is so that if any of their software is ripped off the company lawyers will be able to support the assertion that the company took reasonable precautions to protect the trade secret. Don Steiny Personetics 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382 ihnp4!pesnta -\ fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny ucbvax!twg -/
mpr@mb2c.UUCP (Mark Reina) (08/21/84)
It is true that the copyright and patent laws do not protect ideas or mathematical algorithms. It is also true that trade secret laws have application on software products. One thing to note on copyrighting a software product: the copyright office only requires that you submit the first 20 pages or both the first and last 15 pages of a software product.
ark@rabbit.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (08/22/84)
As far as I know, if I write a program in C and you translate it into Fortran, that translation is a copy and thus illegal under the copyright law, which specifically defines 'copy' as including 'translation.' The situation is no different from translating a novel from English into French.
dan@idis.UUCP (08/23/84)
I believe that if you could prove that someone had translated your copyrighted work into a different language, you could claim the translation was an illegal derivative work. The hard part would be demonstrating to a bunch on non-programmers (e.g. judges) how the language had changed but the general form of the expression of the idea had not changed.
eager@amd.UUCP (Mike Eager) (08/25/84)
> **** > > I phoned our company lawyer to make sure, but 492@.ames is correct, > the law does not protect ideas. Trying to copyright an idea > is an especially bad idea. Say you write a useful program in > Pascal or F77. It is easy to translate that program into C. > If someone translates your program to C and sells it, tough luck on > you. Anything that is copyrighted must also be published and so > anyone can see it. > Please call the company lawyer again!! What is described here is infringement of copyright, which prohibits the production (beyond reasonable use) of any COPY or DERIVED WORK. Clearly, a TRANSLATION of your program from Pascal to C is production of a derived work, and if the original was copyrighted, the translation is unauthorized. If, on the other hand, you look at what a program does (e.g., read the user manual or advertising literature), and write another program to do the same thing, that is not copyright infringement. The new program may use the novel ideas of the first, which cannot be copyrighted, but there is no copy involved. -- Mike Eager (amd!eager)
ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) (08/28/84)
> Anything that is copyrighted must also be published and so > anyone can see it. That is not true, at least in the United States. Under U. S. law, works are born copyrighted. In other words, if you write something, you automaticly own the copyright. It is possible to lose the copyright on a work. To avoid that, you should put a copyright notice on the work, for example: Copyright 1984 by Kenneth Almquist. You do not have to register a work for the copyright to be valid, but the copyright office will happily register unpublished works if you want them to. You only have to send the beginning and end of your program to the copyright office, so if you don't want people in the copyright office to see your code, you can place 25 page comments at the beginning and end of your program. Kenneth Almquist
emks@uokvax.UUCP (08/30/84)
#R:ames:-48200:uokvax:10400003:000:981 uokvax!emks Aug 30 09:34:00 1984 Is there anything similar to the little-known (but oft-used) Patent Secrecy Act which would deal with Copr material? If you're not familiar with it, the Patent Secrecy Act allows the U.S. to protect the national security by reviewing patents to see if they contain any defense classified information. If they do, the patent process is completed, but the patent requester receives a note in the mail marked "SECRECY ORDER" which admonishes him to not reveal the patented material to anyone to whom it was not known before he received the notice. In the vast majority of cases, secrecy orders are slapped on projects which expected the order anyway; e.g.: a government contractor submitting a classified project for patent. There are some Joe Citizens who have an order put on their "time machine" or other project unexpectedly. Surprise! It is *possible* that the Patent Secrecy Act has to do with Copyrights, too, but I'm too lazy to dig it up. kurt ctvax!uokvax!emks
ron@brl-tgr.UUCP (09/07/84)
> Anything that is copyrighted must also be published and so > anyone can see it. I think you have copyright confused with patent. -Ron