mephistocorugan Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 hehehe.... Code: _________________________________________________ #include reproduction.h float x=0; float y=0; main{ gender(x) { if (x.penis==true) { x=male; y=female; return; else { x=female; y=male; } } reproduction.sex(x && y) { return child; } end; } __________________________________________________ there, that's just a rough idea, but, i've just copyright sex, so none of you can have children. :evil: ...frankly i see this as a Good Thing :old: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickedkitten Veteran Posted February 1, 2002 Veteran Share Posted February 1, 2002 Originally posted by arhra What part of do you not understand? The effects and look may not be copyrighted, but the code itself is an entirely original work. What part of: In the case of software, the "originality" requirement really only means that the program must represent the independent effort of the author and not be copied from someone else's code or program. In some cases, an "original" work may have some elements that are completely original and some that are not, in which case, only the original portions will be protected by copyright. do you not understand are you just not reading what I'm posting or what? I've already stated the law which applies to the entire copyright of the ****ing thing ok? I don't know if I could put this any more simply unless I make a diagram for you out of legos. Just because Stardock coded the damned objectdock in a different way than apple did that doesn't make it original. 1. Manufacturer's Technologies v. CAMS In Manufacturer's Technologies, Inc. v. CAMS, Inc., 706 F. Supp. 984 (D. Conn. 1989), the Court analyzed the copyright protection which extended to a cost estimating computer program called the "COSTIMATOR." The program contains a series of screens which allow the user to input the necessary information to generate a cost estimate. The defendants, three of which had acted as plaintiff's sales representatives for the COSTIMATOR program, began development of a functionally similar program to sell for $1000 to $2500 (as compared to the $20,000 price for plaintiff's program). Plaintiff brought suit for, among other things, copyright infringement based on the similarity of the screen displays in defendants' software. The District Court found copyrightability in the screen displays alone without regard to the underlying program code and also found that defendants had infringed the visual display copyrights. The District Court relied upon the Copyright Office's decision, in part, and stated that: Whether a copyright in a computer program extends to its screen displays has been the subject of some confusion and dis- agreement. Part of this confusion was relieved by a recent decision of the Copyright Office which stated that a single copyright registration of a computer program extends copyright protection not only to the literal elements of the program -- its source and object codes -- but also to the screen displays it generates to the extent that they contain original creative authorship. Do you still wish to continue this debate? Id. at 990-991. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenreaper Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 Originally posted by Wickedkitten ffs you can't just do anything and expect it to be copyrightable. It has to be original, creative, and tangible. ANY code that creates any of the effects seen on Apples dock is a derivative work of something that they once again made, copyrighted, and patented and is not subject to any copyright protection. No, wickedkitten, that's just not how it works. It's how you achive the effect, not the effect itself, that's copyrightable, because the code is the written work. Consider books. Hundreds of romance/murder myster/SF novels are released every year. Many of them are very similar in plots. However, you don't see people saying "oh, that's not copyrightable because it's the same story - they just used different words", because it's the words and how you put them together that matter. As I think someone else mentioned, the KDE bar looks a lot like the Windows taskbar, but it is still a copyrightable work. If MS thought that they had a chance at stopping KDE by suing them over it, they would, but they already know the result because Apple sued them over the "look and feel" - and they lost. Note that I'm not debating the ownership of the Apple icons etc. They are clearly Apple's, and for them to be included in a publicly-distributed version (which this is not) would be a clear violation of copyright. But the code that displayed those images, and caused those effects, is the original work of a Stardock coder - original because it was not inspired by seeing any of Apple's code, not because it does something different - and is copyrighted to them. Heck, if what the code did was all that mattered rather than how it did it, no word processor would be copyrightable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickedkitten Veteran Posted February 2, 2002 Veteran Share Posted February 2, 2002 Originally posted by greenreaper No, wickedkitten, that's just not how it works. It's how you achive the effect, not the effect itself, that's copyrightable, because the code is the written work. Consider books. Hundreds of romance/murder myster/SF novels are released every year. Many of them are very similar in plots. However, you don't see people saying "oh, that's not copyrightable because it's the same story - they just used different words", because it's the words and how you put them together that matter. As I think someone else mentioned, the KDE bar looks a lot like the Windows taskbar, but it is still a copyrightable work. If MS thought that they had a chance at stopping KDE by suing them over it, they would, but they already know the result because Apple sued them over the "look and feel" - and they lost. Note that I'm not debating the ownership of the Apple icons etc. They are clearly Apple's, and for them to be included in a publicly-distributed version (which this is not) would be a clear violation of copyright. Yes thousands of books are created each year and yes each year there are hundreds of cases where people commit plagarism and copyright violation. I can sit here and right a book about a rabid st bernard that terrorizes a woman and her son that are in hmm i dunno lets say a vega, and do you actually think that Stephen King's lawyer isnt going to be at my door serving me with papers for ripping off Cujo? You already said it yourself Apple sued them over the "look and feel" - and they lost. Hmm do I want to bring patents into this? yes I think I will. Aquadock is based on the NEXTdock. Steve Jobs sold NEXT to Apple and Apple ended up with the patent to the NEXTdock, using that patent they made the aquadock which under aqua is copyrighted. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?...=1&f=G&l=50&s1='5,146,556'.WKU.&OS=PN/5,146,556&RS=PN/5,146,556 That is the patent to the dock. If you have code which results in any of those things, no matter if stardock makes it, Mike Tyson makes it, or Your grandma makes it. It's not original, its a patent/copyright violation, whatever easily put. The guy that made objectbar looked at Aquadock and said well **** I want to make a program that looks like that but runs on the pc. You can't say that he didn't cos Brad's already said that stardock wanted to see if they can make a dock that would run on the pc. You can be influenced by something and still be original, but if you purposefully set out to do something that ends up exactly like another object sorry but its not legally considered original. Your analogy with word processors doesn't count because the idea of a work processor isnt original so it can't be copyrighted to begin with. The idea that you are trying to put forth is like typing a document as html or typing it as plain text. The law doesn't care how many html codes you have in it, if the end result looks like the same exact thing its not original no matter which route you took to get to it. You can't get a copyright by breaking a copyright. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts