Computer programs copyright

Copyright registration is easily accompHshed. The copyright claimant completes a relatively simple form, returns it to the Copyright Office with a nominal fee, and deposits copies of the work. Special provisions allow for nondisclosure of trade secrets or full computer programs and the like in the deposit. 

Copyright Literary works including computer programs 70 years from death of author or date of creation (in the case of joint works)... 

Most other major industrial countries have adopted similar rules, and in 2002 the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Copyright Treaty of 1996 [25] entered into force for a number of countries, including Japan and the United States. Signatories to this treaty must ensure that computer programs are protected as literary works [26]. 

This presents a fairly unique problem in the computer science field. IP rights are essentially national rights. They are only valid in the country in which they are granted or registered. A valid US patent is only valid in the United States, a Canadian copyright only valid in Canada. Even a so-called European patent is, in effect, a bundle of national patents valid in various European countries. This raises a problem in a situation in which, for example, the user of a computer program is in one country and the server is in another country. 

Breyer, S. (1970), The uneasy case for copyright a study of copyright in books, photocopies and computer programs , Harvard Law Review, 84, pp. 281-351. 

Samuelson, P. (1984), CONTU revisited the case against copyright protection for computer programs in machine readable form , Duke Law Journal, pp. 663-769. 

Dowty, E. (1991) ATOMS. A computer program for displaying atomic structures. Copyright E. Dowty, 122 pp. 

For more detailed calculations (e.g. if the presence of free carbon must be assumed), the reader is referred to M. A. Cook The Science of High Explosives, Chapman Hall, London 1958 and, by the same author The Science of Industrial Explosives, copyright 1974 by IR-ECO CHEMICALS, Salt Lake City, USA. They contain basic data on heat capacities and equilibria constants concerned, as well as computing programs for hand and machine calculations. 

Figure 7.42. Experimental setup and eastic recoil detection (ERD) spectra for multiwalled nanotubes, and a Kapton polyimide film. A computer program, SIMRA, is useful to simulate ERD as well as other non-RBS data. Reproduced with permission from Naab, F. U. Holland, O. W. Duggan, J. L. McDaniel, F. D. J. Phys. Chem. B 2005,109, 1415. Copyright 2005 American Chemical Society.

B. Protecting the copyrights and intellectual properties of software developers is referred to as licensing. A software license is a legal contract that defines the ways in which you may use a computer program. 

In late 1984, the Software Protection Act of 1984 and the Record Rental Amendment of 1984 were signed into law. Both laws require authorization from the copyright owner before one may rent, lease, or lend computer programs or records for commercial purposes. 

Protection in accordance with this Directive shall apply to the expression in any form of a computer program. Ideas and principles which underhe any element of a computer program, including those which underhe its interfaces, are not protected by copyright under this Directive. 

The law was changed, firstly by the 1988 Act, to give a right to the owners of copyright in sound recordings, films or computer programs to prevent rental or lending of those works by others without permission. The... 

It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to make a back-up copy of it which is necessary for him to have for the purpose of lawful rrse. 

---