| |||||||||||||
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)Posted May 9, 2012 1:11 UTC (Wed) by andreasb (subscriber, #80258)In reply to: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) by drag Parent article: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom (ars technica)
> That's like telling a Jury to decide: Assuming that smiling is copyrightable and Joe smiled first did Tom then violate copyright in this photograph. Safe to say if the Tom is seen smiling then yes he did violate copyright.
Now this is off-topic and nitpicking, but still… Your example would work if it were about patents. Unless I'm mistaken, copyright is about the actual copying of works, not their similarity. If Tom has never seen Joe's smile he doesn't violate copyright with his own smile since it is not based on Joe's work — even if both smiles looked identical. In fact he would have his own copyright on that smile.
ISTR there being an actual case of two independent copyrights on mostly identical musical works.
(Log in to post comments)
|
|||||||||||||