

EU: Copyright Doesn't Cover Functionality, Programming Language - thomholwerda
http://www.osnews.com/story/25373/EU_Copyright_Doesn_t_Cover_Functionality_Programming_Language

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_delirium
Fwiw, the question here seems to be pretty close to the "API copyright"
question currently being litigated in the U.S. as one aspect of the
Java/Dalvik lawsuit between Oracle and Google. HN discussions on that point:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2916735> /
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2996084>

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thomholwerda
[author of the article here]

You're right, and I thought about including it in the article. However, I
decided not to include it as to not cloud the waters, for two reasons:

1) Oracle v Google is a US case, and this opinion only covers the EU.

2) Oracle v Google seems to be more about patent infringement than copyright
infringement. This opinion only covers copyright.

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calpaterson
The author is surprised at the justice's competence, but, by the time someone
gets promoted to the ECJ (remember, they go all the way through their
undergraduate degree, then through their postgraduate legal training, then
maybe some more training, then a placement, then a junior position...etc) they
are going to be pretty well read and probably pretty competent too. To top it
off, they are totally unaccountable and unbeholden to anyone (ie: it's the
EU).

In short, you can expect an an international copyright judge in a very senior
court to be smart and to do what he feels like.

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Roboprog
So, Mono is likely to be declared "safe" in Europe next year, it seems.

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nkassis
Copyright wise I think so but not patent wise. They could still be attacked
that way.

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berntb
Huh, are there software patents in the EU now?!

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tzs
There have been software patents in the EU for decades. The section on
"Europe" in the Wikipedia article on software patents
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent>) contains links to decent
explanations of what's going on there.

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WalterBright
I thought this was settled when the first PC clone BIOS was written using
"clean room" techniques.

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petegrif
This should be no surprise. The case was weak. Copyright offers no practical
intellectual protection for software. And in this case the software in
question was reverse engineered!

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noonespecial
Copyright offers the most important protection software can have. If you want
the result, you have to do the work again. Unlike patents that close off
entire avenues of advancement just for being the first to add "with a
computer" or "on the interwebs" to the end of some obvious activity, copyright
acknowledges that you can do just about anything with a general purpose
computer but if you want to do it, you've got to put in the effort yourself or
pay someone who has.

Copyrights make you write your own code. Patents prevent you from writing your
own code.

