Re: [OT] Re: Intellectual Property in Network Design

[Rafael Possamai <rafael () gav ufsc br>]

Thank you for looking up facts, laws, etc... The rest is merely opinion,
and wouldn't necessarily help someone trying to protect their network
designs.

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 11:25 AM, <Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu> wrote:

> 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... :)