[OT] Re: Intellectual Property in Network Design

Fri Feb 13 17:25:25 UTC 2015

On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 10:28:25 -0500, William Herrin said:

> I have to disagree with you there. This particular ship sailed four decades
> ago when CONTU found computer software to be copyrightable and the
> subsequent legislation and litigation agreed.

The output of "craft" is copyrightable even if it doesn't count as "art",
as long as it meets the requirement of 17 USC 102(a)(1) - "literary works".

The issue with software wasn't if it was "art", but if it was a literary work
(they struggled for a while with the concept of machine-readable versus human
readable).

"Furthermore, the House Report discussing the Act states:
The term "literary works" does not connote any criterion of literary merit or
qualitative value: it includes catalogs, directories, and similar factual,
reference, or instructional works and compilations of data. It also includes
computer data bases, and computer programs to the extent that they incorporate
authorship in the programmer's expression of original ideas, as
distinguished from the ideas themselves. {FN8: H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 at 54}

http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise17.html

If catalogs and directories are covered, config files are... :)

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