Rivals can create copycat software through testing and user manuals: UK court
out-law.com
out-law.com
This was in the 90s, and STB interfaces were in their infancy - there were no animations, or alpha blending, or huge databases of films, including images of jackets etc - it was mostly just text and some simple vector graphics. All of which made my life as a programmer much easier, thankfully, because I only had about a week to get the thing done.
The funny part of the story comes in when I discovered that the software was just full of bugs. I would press a button on the remote control on a certain screen and the STB would reboot. This proved to be a bit of a problem for me, because I had to try and figure out what we were actually supposed to do, but as I wasn't allowed to disassemble the actual Foxtel code and see what it was trying to do, I was quite perplexed.
3 days into the week my boss was starting to get edgy - I had all of the most common screens up and running, but he could see that I had logged a whole bunch of bugs into the bug tracker, and I apparently wasn't making much progress in getting them fixed. So he came by my desk to see what was going on. I explained to him that the bugs existed in the original STB that I was copying, and the best replacement functionalities that I could come up with led to quite a bit of complexity in the code base. My boss looked at me quizzically, and then just shrugged his shoulders "Just dereference a NULL-pointer!".
Oh. Right. We never did get a contract from Foxtel, but I gave one of the cloned STBs to a neighbour to test in real-life conditions. I couldn't pry it out of his hands afterwards though - he thought it was so much better than the original product, dereference NULL pointers and all...
Also, that's a pretty cool story actually!
I get that patents != copyright, but we're still entering a rather strange state of affairs...
AFAIK, software patent trolling isn't very bad in the UK
I might violate US patent law (which is an increasing concern given the apparent freedom of extradition), but I'm not violating UK law.
There is copyright over my writing (here, lines of code), but typically not over my idea.
(easy on the downvotes, it's just a little bit of humour, people)
Truly innovative ideas: Patent and 20 years protection at some cost and significant paperwork.
Duplication or derivative of an expression (whether source code or binary files): Copyright and a long protection (too long but that is a separate topic) of that expression and derivatives of it.
Creative and unique design: Registered design (Design patent in US) fairly weak and narrow protection, not sure of the duration.
Copyright should be narrow protection as this case supports. That doesn't mean that no other protections should be applied to creative works.
A case like this is highly useful at staving off spurious law suits and spoiling tactics (particularly from bigger players against smaller players).
I think it's a good decision.
This gives the practise a fixed definition in UK case law rather than people just assuming it is OK.
Of course this is only covering copyright: patents will complicate the issue.
And that's why we have 416 page EULAs.
If I'm an employee, I don't want to be tied down to some third party's arbitrary commercial licensing terms just to do my job for the employer who is paying for that software so I can. Software vendors put some crazy things in EULAs, and there's no way I want to be the guy going to court to find out whether any of them stands up when tested.
As an employer, it's an even more blatant cash grab than moving one-time purchases to subscription arrangements without any useful improvement in other areas to justify it. It creates a fixed cost that walks out the door with the same notice that the employee in question gives to leave their employment. And depending on the software vendor's policies, it may be an irreplaceable asset, if for example they force you to upgrade to the latest version when buying a replacement, which in turn creates built-in obsolescence.
I'm pretty sure I'd refuse to accept the terms of such a licence agreement in either role. There is absolutely nothing in it for the licensor, as far as I can see. It seems like it's just warping the concept of copyright another step in favour of the copyright holder, which the very idea of licence agreements already does to a dubious extent anyway.
"...non coding structural elements of software are not protected by copyright"
as I had understood that there is database copyright. Reference on the same site: http://www.out-law.com/page-5698
But when "visual" includes GUI, there's less copyright protection (because user interface elements are functional). Check out the Apple v. Microsoft case from 1994 as an example.
I'm not sure what the equivalent UK law would be.