Re: Communications Protocols

On 9/7/05, David E. Hollingsworth <deh[_at_]fastanimals.com> wrote:
>
> I'm interested in learning about the degree of copyrightability of
> communications protocols in the United States.

The U.S. copyright law clearly stated that the copyright does not extend to "any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work" (Section 102(b)). (Procedure, process, system, and method of operation may be patented but that is a different topic.)

However, I have not seen any organizations such as ISO and W3C and the writers of the protocols explicitly state that they do not own copyright in protocols themselves. They are totally silent on this. The silence may be interpreted as that they do not like what the law says because they do not want to give up their control over their protocols. (Imagine how ISO will become very mad if people know that they can copy protocols from their standards without paying fee or asking for permissions.)

You just have to be careful what you are going to do, be ready to fight or surrender if you are challenged by the organizations and writers of protocols. Also, be aware of the pitfalls in license if you choose to agree to it in order to use protocols.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,863

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Thu Sep 08 2005 - 22:20:00 GMT