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True, however... They can copyright the statement of the idea because it is essentially only protecting the right to copy the statement. If one has to develop in an open environment, that may be sufficient to establish a chain of ownership by which a case is built later. It will come down to the judge/jury as to whether a copyright violation has occurred. The code is of course, copyrightable. The essential notion is "fixed form" which does not copyright the idea but the right to copy the form. That is why there are separate copyrights for a musical composition and for any rendering of it (the sound recording) and separate revenue streams (the owner of the sound recording if not the owner of the copyright for the composition is obligated to pay royalties). For an idea, patent is the way to go but we've been all over this issue before on this list. Len Bullard Intergraph Public Safety clbullar@i... http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: KenNorth [mailto:KenNorth@e...] Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 10:05 AM To: xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: What Can One Do If...? Michael, In the US, someone can copyright code, but not the idea or acronym. They can't protect the acronym unless they register it as a trademark (e.g., Sun's JDBC).
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