Business and the Law; Copyrights On Software
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ByFLECTING the growing uncertainty about the boundaries of copyright law, the chief lawyer for the Copyright Office has asked the agency to re-examine its rules protecting certain computer technology. ByFLECTING the growing uncertainty about the boundaries of copyright law, the chief lawyer for the Copyright Office has asked the agency to re-examine its rules protecting certain computer technology. The request, by Dorothy M. Schrader, general counsel for the Copyright Office, coincides with a spate of lawsuits that may determine how the law covers computer software, its ”look and feel” to the person behind the personal computer keyboard and the images that software produces on a video display screen or a printout. While a company can receive a copyright on a software program or a separate copyright on some computer graphics, the distinctions between the two copyrights and the legal ability to protect keyboard functions and commands remain unclear. * * * At stake, according to Ms. Schrader and lawyers involved in cases in California, Massachusetts and Georgia, is not only proprietary rights worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but also whether copyright laws will foster or discourage innovation. ”On the one hand, it’s important to give some protection in order to encourage the development of new products,” said Paul Goldstein, professor of intellectual property at Stanford University. ”On the other, the law doesn’t want to discourage competition and innovation by building upon someone else’s discoveries.” So far, two types of lawsuits have arisen. One poses the question of whether the copyright law protects ”user interface,” the industry’s term that describes how a program looks and feels to the person using the program. The codes of two computer programs may be different, according to two complaints, but there is infringement if the two programs produce similar commands and functions. A second dispute has arisen over programs that generate comparable screen images on a display terminal even though they are produced by programs made up of different computer languages. ”The question that comes up is the extent to which the program and the screen should be considered separately or part of the same package,” said Morton D. Goldberg, a lawyer at Schwab, Goldberg, Price & Dannay. $ ? Even though new software programs can usually be copyrighted, sometimes an image that appears on a computer screen or printout cannot by itself be copyrighted. Typically, material that is not protected includes standard forms, such as those used for billing or business ledgers. More : query.nytimes.com |