On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 08:00:56PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: > A more likely scenario: you write a program in Pascal, and give it > to me. Pascal is a useless language, so I programmatically convert > it to C (a fairly simple task), and then spend a few weeks improving > the program in C.
Frankly, you would have a fight to prove in court that the C program is a derivative work of the Pascal one *at all*. Lawyer-bait, but when you start out with a scenario like that it will never become any more clear later on. The best answer you can ever get, starting from this position, is "maybe". This is largely because a C program that you want to modify is not going to look much like the original Pascal program - that's the reason why you converted it in the first place (the status of the initial, programmatically converted C program is not relevant; you can drop it from the scenario with no effect since it is just a restatement of the Pascal program). Remember that algorithms cannot be copyrighted, only patented: copyright protects only the expression of the idea, not the idea. This is the ultimate reason why these things are always so fuzzy. They all push the boundary of what is actually a derivative, and what is merely drawing on "reasonable experience". Their conclusions will invariably be reducable to an expression in terms of this. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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