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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DownSouth who wrote (15134)	1/14/2000 1:03:00 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Copyright and programs are a very murky area with marked differences in judgements depending on the district. There have been rulings that look and feel is copyright, possibly the only part that is copyright, since it is the part visible to the user. Clearly, it is dangerous to copy look and feel, but all of the Microsoft, Apple, Xerox bit makes it anything but a slam dunk. As for the source code, rulings span the gamut from only protecting direct copies to others where it was considered infringement because the overall flow and algorithm was similar, even though it was written in a very different language. No one in this business relies on copyright to protect source code as a primary protection. Instead, they rely on trade secrets protection and keeping it secure.

To: DownSouth who wrote (15134)	1/14/2000 9:02:00 PM
From: Sam Johnson	Respond to of 54805

DS and Thomas, thanks for further clarifying the in's and out's of protecting software. This whole concept of proprietary open architecture is getting clearer to me. Thanks to all for fleshing it out. And by the way, I already told chaz this via pm, but this whole project of picking companies and doing gorilla presentations is really pretty amazing. Where else could you possibly find anything of this nature? We have our own open-to-the-public, grass-roots, real-time think tank/research organization here. Incredible. The power of the internet doesn't get much better than this - I've told several friends lately that this forum is the best investing site on the net. Kudo's to everyone. Sam

To: DownSouth who wrote (15134)	1/15/2000 4:25:00 AM
From: red jinn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

re protecting software (one lawyer's response): without getting too detailed, copyright protects independent creations/expressions, which means that copyright doesn't protect against duplication, only against copying. example: shakespeare couldn't complain if the monkeys at typewriters came up with hamlet. however, he could complain if i "copied" hamlet from the first quarto with minor variations. but shakespeare couldn't nail leonard bernstein though b/c he only copied the "idea" of romeo and juliet when he wrote/composed west side story. whether a court will find copyright infringement b/c someone copied someone else's code will depend upon a lot of factors, but the two key ones are "substantial similarity" and "access." so if a judge sees B's source code (i.e., "human-readable" code - as compared to "object code," which is machine-readable) that looks an awful lot like A's source code, the first test has been met. then, e.g., if B was an ex technical employee of A, access will probably be presumed and a judgment of infringement rendered. OTOH, if B says yes, i was an employee of A's, but i can prove i subcontracted out the development of the code in a "clean room" atmosphere, the burden of proof may fall back on A. there are a lot of wrinkles to this. courts have held that it's ok to reverse engineer someone's code to see how it "works," so third parties can build/attach an interface. some may remember the case involving a competitor to sega who figured out sega's gameboy's protective code so that the competitor could build products to tie into gameboy. the court said that kind of reverse engineering was ok. while it's possible to register copyrights by filing with the copyright office, competitors can visit the office and see what's filed there. b/c software source code was meant to be kept secret, special rules were developed by the copyright office which allowed authors to file only part of the source code, e.g., the first and last 50 pages. nevertheless, most software companies don't file copyrights. they use trade secret or, since last summer, patent protection if they can. (OT: if software is registered w/i three months of its initial publication, the owner can get statutory damages, which can be significant, and resonable attorney fees (is that an oxymoron?) in a successful infringement suit. if you register after that date, you get atty fees if the judge agrees you sd get them and you have to prove your actual damages instead of relying on "presumed" statutory damages.) for those of you involved in licensing software, there's also the problem of policing theft. if someone steals your code, how will you know it (assuming the thief just wants a copy and doesn't want to build a business around it). but i sd point out that in the past year alone, i've represented 4-5 companies whose employees had duplicated and loaded unauthorized copies of software on their personal pc's, i.e., the employer had a license to run at least one copy and usually had more. in at least two of the cases, senior execs didn't know about the illegal duplication until a fired/departing employee tipped off the vendor that illegal copies of the vendor's product could be found at their ex-employers. software theft is serious. most folks don't know it, but the copyright law was amended a couple of years ago to take out the requirement that the thief/infringer had to "profit" financially from the infringement. so, for example, the way the law reads now, if your child offers to duplicate one of his software games to give to a friend in exchange for the friend's duplication of one of his games, both are subject (theoretically) to jail time and fines. of course the intent behind the law's amendment was to nail more serious, large volume theives, but technically it goes that far. it's probably not worth it to go on, although i'd be glad to if someone wants to pm me about it, so feel free. best, red jinn