> Surely a company cannot enforce footprint > protection, since they cannot tell the difference, from looking at a > board, between a hand-made footprint and a re-used footprint.
That's why data can not be covered by copyright. For example the names and numbers in a phone book can be reproduced and re-publised but the typographical layout of space and the pagebreaks and width of the colukns and so on are covered under copyright. I think what this means for foot prints is that the size the location of the pads is not covered but the bytes in the file that describe the size and location of the pads is covered. So you could re-format the file so that the data are written differently you'd be OK. The same applies to compilations of public domain works. each work is not covered but the act of assembling a compilation is itself a creative effort that can be copyrighted. So a footprint library might be covered if it was assembled from public information. -- ===== Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user