Linus Torvalds gets software patents wrong, says attorney (Out-Law)

Posted Dec 2, 2004 15:24 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332)
Parent article: Linus Torvalds gets software patents wrong, says attorney (Out-Law)

" Torvalds and his supporters lack a fundamental understanding of intellectual property rights as they seem to be unaware that copyright can only protect software code, and not software inventions..."

How in the hell could be software inventions without software code ?...

This argument seems flawed from tip to toe. Its obviously in contradition with the spirit of protection that copirights is all about. Software is obviously only a language, not a product, which primary form is the code, and the imense different *mathematical* speaches that you can make with it,... and if you protect software code you are obviously protecting also software inventions in a large sense.

There are several human speaked words that mean the same,... there are several mathematical algoritms, that a computacional binary machine will deliver the same result,... lawyers will never get that!.

Otherwise this lawyer seem to argue that, copyright should be void some how, and then 'there is an open door' to steal(copy) everbody's code as long it dosent steal the invention apparatus, whatever that might be !..

I only wonder how much F/OSS must be connect/derived/influenced in every sort of invented apparatus software!?

Linus Torvalds gets software patents wrong, says attorney (Out-Law)

Posted Dec 2, 2004 16:39 UTC (Thu) by sepreece (guest, #19270) [Link]

In US IP law, copyrights protect authors against direct copying of their "expressions", which could be words, code, musical notes, etc. Copyrights also protect against someone producing "derived works", such as translations into another language. However, they do not protect against someone expressing the same idea independently. Thus, I can tell you what a copyrighted book tells you, but I can't use the author's words. [This is an oversimplification, since the structure and purpose may also be important in determining whether a copyright is infringed, but it's the general principle.]

A patent, on the other hand, covers an idea and a method of implementing that idea. This is much broader protection, in most cases, than a copyright, because it covers the method, rather than just one expression of the method.

So, to answer your question, there could not be "software inventions without software code", but the code is just a single expression of the invention, so copyright would protect that code (and its derivatives) but would not protect the invention.