Confessions of an Amicus Curiae: Technophobia, Law, and Creativity in the Digital Arts

Symposium: Copyright Protection and Reverse Engineering of Softwar

Copyright Protection of Computer Software: Has Look and Feel Crashed?

Let me take the more global question first: Is copyright the appropriate body of law with which to protect computer software? Ten years ago, I would have argued—indeed I did argue—that it was not. If we were beginning today with a completely clean slate on which to write software protection, I would still argue that copyright would be an unfortunate choice of a home for software protection law. But we\u27re not writing on a clean slate. We have not only spent years adjusting copyright to software protection and software protection to copyright, we\u27ve also muscled all of our trading partners into adopting copyright protection for software. Some of them accepted the copyright paradigm only reluctantly and we would not be behaving as good world citizens if we suddenly announced, Whoops, sorry, we were wrong about that; we\u27re giving up on the copyright model. So I think that whether copyright is the most appropriate vehicle for software protection or not, our decision to leave software protection within the copyright statute is a done deal. What we\u27ve got to figure out now is how best to assimilate software protection to the copyright model

Copyright Protection of Computer Software: Has Look and Feel Crashed?

Let me take the more global question first: Is copyright the appropriate body of law with which to protect computer software? Ten years ago, I would have argued—indeed I did argue—that it was not. If we were beginning today with a completely clean slate on which to write software protection, I would still argue that copyright would be an unfortunate choice of a home for software protection law. But we\u27re not writing on a clean slate. We have not only spent years adjusting copyright to software protection and software protection to copyright, we\u27ve also muscled all of our trading partners into adopting copyright protection for software. Some of them accepted the copyright paradigm only reluctantly and we would not be behaving as good world citizens if we suddenly announced, Whoops, sorry, we were wrong about that; we\u27re giving up on the copyright model. So I think that whether copyright is the most appropriate vehicle for software protection or not, our decision to leave software protection within the copyright statute is a done deal. What we\u27ve got to figure out now is how best to assimilate software protection to the copyright model