Quoting William Case <billlinux [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com>: > Hi; > > I asked this question a few days ago on the OCLUG list and got a few > answers but not really to the heart of the matter. It has become a > joint question from miden and myself. To summarize: > > Adrian Irving-Beer had explained to me clearly what is meant by file > format proprietary ownership and that got me wondering how or in > what > manner copyright and patents apply to program code. > > I tried to make it clear I was NOT asking for the legal > ramifications > but rather "If I write my 50 lines of code, is it the literal 50 > lines > of source? Is > it the compiled binary? If someone writes the same thing but uses > another programming language are the rights the same? etc ... I > suppose I am asking, what is the object of all these rights and > disputes? Not, what are the various rights involved?" (IANAL) In Canada it is slightly different from the USA, the 50 lines of source code - the literal 50 lines - are protected by copyright. Someone else could theoretically independantly write a different set of source code that compiled to the same executable binary - but that would be unlikely enough. Using another language to copy the functionality of a program complicates things somewhat, but I think that a story written in English can't be simply translated to French to avoid copyright infringement. I believe the same principal applies to software in Canada since it is largely considered a "literary work". That would also tend to protect the binary somewhat also, but I have no idea to what extent. The solution by the way, would be to protect the compiled binary by an additional copyright - it is after all, a file of 1's and 0's, just like the source code is. In the US, in addition to the protection of copyright on the literal 50 lines of source code, you can also obtain a patent. Patents are granted on machines, and so the protection extends to the compiled binary (because it is in a sense, part of the machine...or some such, according to US courts.) In the US, patent protection can often be extended to the ideas, business practices, mathematical algoritms etc. behind the source code. Easy trick. Write software in Canada, take out a US or International patent in the USPTO. Rod. ----- End forwarded message -----