[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I recently decided to write programs for the Palm, and I am new to all this
> world of shareware development. Last december, after working very hard to
> learn the Palm OS programming techniques and nuts and bolds I finished my
> first program "Euro Exchange", and a more advanced version I named
> "CurrencyX".
>
> Very recently I was disheartened to see that someone "cloned" my program,
> copying the concepts and screen designs, releasing it as freeware.
Copyright covers your source code and binary but not your ideas. Patents exist
to protect ideas and I imagine that its difficult to obtain one of them...
essentially, you have to prove that your idea is unique.
There's a good book entitled, "The Legal Environment of Computing" by James
Fitzsimons that might be worth a read. Here's a quote, "Copyright is not
concerned with 'mere ideas' in a work. Anybody can create another work using
exactly the same ideas and not be in breach of copyright at all, but nobody
can copy the actual words of the author.". There are, "look and feel" and
"reverse engineering" aspects to copyright infringement too e.g. if your user
interface was blatantly copied, you may have a case given that the UI presents
itself as an artistic work.
Anyhow, if you feel really hot about it you should seek out good legal advice
and not the hobbyist stuff that I'm dealing out! :-)
--
Christopher Hunt
Class Action Pty. Ltd.
Are you a time zone traveler that owns a Palm(tm) connected organizer?
Check out http://www.classactionpl.com/TimeTraveler/index.htm
