roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (01/21/87)
While perusing /usr/src on my new 4.3BSD tapes, I ran across
"pagesize.c". This little gem consists of 15 or so lines of copyright
notice and SCCS information, and a main() routine which has a 1-line body.
The code contained in the body is (how do I say this without violating the
copyright?) a call to a well-known standard I/O output routine with two
arguments, the first of which specifies decimal conversion, the second of
which is a system call to get the page size.
The obvious question is whether the copyright notice means
anything. Can one really copyright something which is so straightforward,
trivial, and obvious? If you gave the assignment "write a C program which
prints the system page size in decimal to stdout" to 50 programmers, most
of them would come up with substantially the same program, and many would
probably be identical, character for character, to the 4.3 version. If the
copyright is valid, then any program I write which has that line of code,
or a similar line of code, in it would be a derivitive work. Clearly this
is absurd.
The real question is where does this end? If you write a 500 line
program, and I come along and use your 500 lines of code in a program I
wrote, making some minor textual changes, like adding extra whitespace
around the operators, it would be pretty clear that I violated your
copyright. On the other hand, I assert that if I use the line of code from
4.3's /usr/src/bin/pagesize.c, unchanged, in a program I write, I havn't
violated any copyright. Obviously there has to be some point in between
these two extremes which delimits what is OK and what isn't. Where is that
point?
--
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
"you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"earlw@pesnta.UUCP (Earl Wallace) (01/21/87)
In article <2567@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: > ... > anything. Can one really copyright something which is so straightforward, > trivial, and obvious? If you gave the assignment "write a C program which > prints the system page size in decimal to stdout" to 50 programmers, most > of them would come up with substantially the same program, and many would > probably be identical, character for character, to the 4.3 version. If the > copyright is valid, then any program I write which has that line of code, > or a similar line of code, in it would be a derivitive work. Clearly this > is absurd. >... I think the copyright is just a legal way to telling the World that you intend to protect your "code" in a court of law if necessary. We all know how expensive lawers and court cases can be, so I would wonder about a company that would go thru all the trouble to protect small pieces of code (unless that code was really great and worth protecting). P.S. - I copyrighted the following code and you may not use it without paying me $1,000,000.95 for each copy: /* Copyright 1987 Earl Wallace, All Rights Reserved */ main() { :-) see you in court!
nobody@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Unprivileged user) (01/21/87)
In article <2567@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: > >... I ran across >"pagesize.c". ... consists of ... a copyright notice ... and a main() >routine which has a 1-line body. >...[Does] the copyright notice mean anything? Can one really copyright >something which is so straightforward, trivial, and obvious? >Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy No. If there is only a countable number of ways to state something, it is not copyrightable. Expressions such as "Baby on Board" are generally not copyrightable. For such expressions, it appears that the fuzzy line of demarcation is around one sentence. Stan Tomlinson
jordan@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Jordan Hayes) (01/21/87)
Roy Smith <roy@phri.UUCP> asks: The obvious question is whether the copyright notice means anything. Can one really copyright something which is so straightforward, trivial, and obvious? #include <sys/disclaim.h> It was put there as part of the effort to "clean up" all the code in the 4BSD release which included putting copyright notices and SCCS info on everything, regardless of size. I think any lawyer would have a difficult time doing anything about you using that one-line of code, but it would be harder for CSRG to make the determination of what they should or should not have copyrighted, due to size ... /jordan
ark@alice.UUCP (01/22/87)
In article <2567@phri.UUCP>, roy@phri.UUCP writes: > The obvious question is whether the copyright notice means > anything. Can one really copyright something which is so straightforward, > trivial, and obvious? If you gave the assignment "write a C program which > prints the system page size in decimal to stdout" to 50 programmers, most > of them would come up with substantially the same program, and many would > probably be identical, character for character, to the 4.3 version. If the > copyright is valid, then any program I write which has that line of code, > or a similar line of code, in it would be a derivitive work. Clearly this > is absurd. It sure is, and I don't think that's the law. As far as I know, copyright only protects copying. In order to copy something, you have to see the original and transcribe it in some way (including changing it). Thus, for instance, it is impossible to violate the copyright on something you never saw. So suppose I come up with something that looks just like this little program and Berkeley accuses me of copyright infringement? Essentially, they have to convince a jury that I saw this program and used it to base my own version on. For something that short, it would be a little hard to prove.
jay@imagen.UUCP (Jay Jaeckel) (01/22/87)
In article <2490@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>, nobody@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Unprivileged user) writes: >> [ Regarding the copyright notice on an otherwise one-line program ] > No. If there is only a countable number of ways to state something, it is > not copyrightable. Expressions such as "Baby on Board" are generally not > copyrightable. For such expressions, it appears that the fuzzy line of > demarcation is around one sentence. > > Stan Tomlinson Even worse -- A co-worker of mine has a roll of little round adhesive stickers for marking master copies of things. Each sticker has the word "MASTER" on it and a copyright symbol. -- J.J.
amos@instable.UUCP (Amos Shapir) (01/22/87)
This has been discussed before, when in one release of SysV the file /bin/true, which used to be an empty command file, had been crowned with a 16-line copyright notice (automatically by some distribution- creating utility). The final answer given (by a lawyer) was: if you write Macbeth without knowing at the time that it had already been written before, you may copyright it as your own, and anyone publishing or performing it (*your* Macbeth, not Shakespeare's) should pay you royalties! Of course, the longer the creation, the harder it is to prove you created it, rather than copy it. -- Amos Shapir National Semiconductor (Israel) 6 Maskit st. P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel (011-972) 52-522261 amos%nsta@nsc 34.48'E 32.10'N
ark@alice.UUCP (01/22/87)
In article <812@imagen.UUCP>, jay@imagen.UUCP writes: > Even worse -- A co-worker of mine has a roll of little round adhesive > stickers for marking master copies of things. Each sticker has the > word "MASTER" on it and a copyright symbol. I don't see any problem with that! Of course, it is senseless to copyright a single word -- but entirely reasonable to copyright the design of the label: choice of colors, typeface, layout, and so on.
oster@lapis.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (01/22/87)
Although really short things, like book titles, cannot be registered with the copyright office, they may be trade-marked. In fact the word "copyright" itself, is a registered trade-mark of Mr. Pearlmutter of El Paso, Texas, and may not be used without permission (according to his son).
dan@prairie.UUCP (Daniel M. Frank) (01/23/87)
In article <6564@alice.uUCp> ark@alice.UUCP writes: >As far as I know, copyright only protects copying. In order to copy >something, you have to see the original and transcribe it in some >way (including changing it). [...] > >So suppose I come up with something that looks just like this little >program and Berkeley accuses me of copyright infringement? Essentially, >they have to convince a jury that I saw this program and used it to >base my own version on. Recently, several large software companies, most notably Apple Computer and Lotus Development, have initiated copyright infringement suits based on the "look and feel" of their products. Apple intimidated Digital Research into changing its Gem product, which it felt resembled the Macintosh interface too much. They also forced Microsoft to enter into an agreement to protect Windows from similar treatment. All this in spite of the fact that Apple cloned the Mac interface almost whole cloth from earlier Xerox products. Lotus has suits outstanding against two makers of 1-2-3 workalikes. These suits do not contend that the authors of these products ever saw a line of Lotus code; they are an attempt to extend copyright protection to the user interface of a product. Presumably, even if Lotus wins these suits, no judge would ever rule for the owner of /bin/true in cases like this. Nonetheless, if "look and feel" becomes a part of copyright precedent, the effects could be chilling, to say the least. I think this sort of action is really sleazy, by the way. If Lotus had developed some new products that someone wanted, and had Apple not had the arrogance to build a machine without expansion slots (a problem now being rectified, happily), they could have been out there making money instead of protecting dinosaur products they didn't "invent" in the first place. What if VisiCorp had sued Lotus on those grounds? What if Xerox had gone after Apple? They forget quick, don't they? -- Dan Frank uucp: ... uwvax!prairie!dan arpa: dan%caseus@spool.wisc.edu
sewilco@mecc.MECC.COM (Scot E. Wilcoxon) (01/23/87)
In article <2567@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: >[description of a one-line copyrighted program] > The obvious question is whether the copyright notice means >anything. Can one really copyright something which is so straightforward, >trivial, and obvious? If you gave the assignment "write a C program which >... As other posters have noted, you can copyright any program which you authored. (You actually can copyright other programs also, but let's not hash over that in this discussion) "Obviousness" does not concern copyrights. It does concern patents. A valid patent is for something which is not obvious to an engineer in the subject matter. The patent law language is only a little less vague than that, but is intended to not grant patents to very obvious solutions. "Obvious" is implied as being before the patent applicant's discovery. After an engineer knows of such a discovery, it often is obvious. (Only load memory pages from disk when demanded? Of course! :-) -- Scot E. Wilcoxon Minn Ed Comp Corp {quest,dayton,meccts}!mecc!sewilco (612)481-3507 sewilco@MECC.COM ihnp4!meccts!mecc!sewilco "Who's that lurking over there? Is that Merv Griffin?"
mat@mtx5a.UUCP (01/23/87)
> While perusing /usr/src on my new 4.3BSD tapes, I ran across > "pagesize.c". This little gem consists of 15 or so lines of copyright > notice and SCCS information, and a main() routine which has a 1-line body. > The code contained in the body is (how do I say this without violating the > copyright?) a call to a well-known standard I/O output routine with two > arguments, the first of which specifies decimal conversion, the second of > which is a system call to get the page size. > > The obvious question is whether the copyright notice means > anything. Can one really copyright something which is so straightforward, > trivial, and obvious? If you gave the assignment "write a C program which > prints the system page size in decimal to stdout" to 50 programmers, most > of them would come up with substantially the same program, and many would > probably be identical, character for character, to the 4.3 version. If the > copyright is valid, then any program I write which has that line of code, > or a similar line of code, in it would be a derivitive work. Clearly this > is absurd. Roy, I believe that you are confusing copyright with patent. A patent (``patent monopoly'') gives you the right to prevent someone else from making something, whether he creates it independently or not. A copyright provides *no* such protection. If you were to independently create a copy of a copyrighted work (ie create it w/out knowledge of the original) you would have every right to publish it and to control publication by those who might see it. Those who read the other fellow's invention of it would be responsible to *him*. Yes, a mess. It works because of the infinitesmal likelyhood of a work of any size being an exact copy of an independently created work, or even a near copy. In the example that you cite, it would probably be tough to make a case on the basis of that routine. On the other hand, protecting the rights of the holders of the copyright is probably done under a set of rules, proceedures, or conventions that calls for each routine to bear a copyright notice. -- from Mole End Mark Terribile (scrape .. dig ) mtx5b!mat (Please mail to mtx5b!mat, NOT mtx5a! mat, or to mtx5a!mtx5b!mat) (mtx5b!mole-end!mat will also reach me) ,.. .,, ,,, ..,***_*.
m5d@bobkat.UUCP (01/26/87)
In article <812@imagen.UUCP>, jay@imagen.UUCP writes: > Even worse -- A co-worker of mine has a roll of little round adhesive > stickers for marking master copies of things. Each sticker has the > word "MASTER" on it and a copyright symbol. Just remember: Intel has a copyright on lower case i --- I mean lower case I --- I mean copyrIght --- Oh no! Too late! the Intel polIce are here already! AAAAA! They're slappIng me wIth 8080 documentatIon! I can't take It anymore! -- **** **** **** At DIgItal Lynx, we're almost In Garland, but not quIte **** **** **** MIke McNally DIgItal Lynx Inc. Software (not hardware) Person Dallas TX 75243 uucp: {texsun,kIller,Infotel}!pollux!bobkat!m5d (214) 238-7474
ken@argus.UUCP (01/30/87)
In article <472@bobkat.UUCP>, m5d@bobkat.UUCP (Mike McNally ) writes: > Just remember: Intel has a copyright on lower case i --- I mean > lower case I --- I mean copyrIght --- Oh no! Too late! the Intel > polIce are here already! AAAAA! They're slappIng me wIth 8080 > documentatIon! I can't take It anymore! Just as Zilog has a copyright on "Z", its nothing new. For that matter even "Freedom" has been copyrighted, its a terminal. > MIke McNally DIgItal Lynx Inc. > Software (not hardware) Person Dallas TX 75243 > uucp: {texsun,kIller,Infotel}!pollux!bobkat!m5d (214) 238-7474
eric@cti.UUCP (02/10/87)
In article <402@prairie.UUCP> dan@prairie.UUCP (Daniel M. Frank) writes: >In article <6564@alice.uUCp> ark@alice.UUCP writes: >>As far as I know, copyright only protects copying. In order to copy >>something, you have to see the original and transcribe it in some >>way (including changing it). [...] > > Recently, several large software companies, most notably Apple Computer >and Lotus Development, have initiated copyright infringement suits based >on the "look and feel" of their products. [...] Artists, including painters, sculptors, jewelers, and others, have long been able to copyright their work, to give them control over reproductions. If another artist independently creates a similar (if not identical) work, the copyright is not infringed. If someone sees the original, and then creates the similar or identical work, the copyright may be infringed. As I see it (as a non-lawyer!), this would be precedent for protecting the "look and feel" of a product in the cases where there is a conscious attempt to capitalize on the success of a product. So things such as "Kloneware" (was that them?) loudly advertising their "Mirror" product as being indistinguishable from the original (more expensive) product could be in trouble. Independently-developed products, perhaps with the independence supported by evidence of user-interface research, rather than copying, should not infringe on a copyright. An important question then becomes, do potential customers during this research influence the design because they prefer the one they were already exposed to, the previous product? And at what point does it cross over into more general and ubiquitous areas which are not copyrightable (e.g. a jeweler's design of an earring: the specifics of, say, a gold flower, are protectable, but the fact that it has a stud for insertion in a pierced ear is not)? Is something like a desktop metaphor, a mouse and menus, getting into that general functionality class of ideas? Ideas are not copyrightable, just a specific expression of them is. I see people being careful to avoid pull-down menus, using pop-up, pop-down, hold-down, all sorts of other things. This strikes me as being silly. I agree, too broad application of protection to the "look and feel" of software seems about as fair and reasonable as would broad interpretation of the recently-passed Electronic Information and Privacy Act. As Shakespeare wrote, "First, we kill the lawyers." I wonder if the judges shouldn't be first, or at least simultaneous. I'm not a lawyer. I feel extreme disgust and worry over the direction that litigation has been taking over the past several years, particularly regarding liability suits and legal issues regarding technology. In a more ideal world, people would accept responsibility for the results of their actions, and would behave responsibly towards each other and the work and property of others. Sigh. -- Eric Black "Garbage In, Gospel Out" UUCP: {sun,pyramid,hplabs,amdcad}!cti!eric
herbw@midas.UUCP (02/11/87)
-------- In article <536@cti.cti.UUCP> eric@cti.UUCP (Eric Black) writes: > I see people > being careful to avoid pull-down menus, using pop-up, pop-down, hold-down, > all sorts of other things. This strikes me as being silly. In Patent Number 4,464,652, Granted to Apple Computer on August 7, 1984, entitled Cursor Control Device for use with Display Systems, Pull-Down menues are covered by claim number 11. Thus, it is not possible to duplicate Apple's Pull Down Menu Interface without infringing on this patent. Remember, Patents do (and should) offer a stronger form of protection than copyrights. -- Herb Weiner (...!tektronix!midas!herbw)
mark@mimsy.UUCP (02/17/87)
In article <1091@midas.TEK.COM> herbw@midas.TEK.COM (Herb Weiner) writes: >In Patent Number 4,464,652, Granted to Apple Computer on August 7, 1984, >entitled Cursor Control Device for use with Display Systems, Pull-Down >menues are covered by claim number 11. Thus, it is not possible to >duplicate Apple's Pull Down Menu Interface without infringing on this patent. Well, my reading of this patent makes it pretty suspect. It in fact seems to patent any sort of thing which pops up on the screen when something is pressed. That includes a lot more look and feel than pull-downs, and it also includes a lot of prior art that perhaps the patent examiner did not know about. A patent, like a copyright, is not much more than standing to sue, and it looks to me like lots of apple's claims won't stand up long. -mark -- Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@mimsy.umd.edu Phone: +1-301-454-7817 CSNet: mark@mimsy UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!mimsy!mark USPS: Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
karl@osu-eddie.UUCP (02/18/87)
mark@mimsy.UUCP writes: >Well, my reading of this patent makes it pretty suspect. It in fact >seems to patent any sort of thing which pops up on the screen when something >is pressed. In the words of Robert A. Heinlein in _The_Door_Into_Summer_... "You claim the world and then wait for someone else to chip away at it. That's what patent lawyers are born for." :-) -- Karl