Re: About Computer Software and Patents

Jessica Litman writes:
>
> Trotter, let me suggest to you that the entire scenes a faire
> doctrine makes uncopyrightable a slew of things that were deemed
> expressive and protected when they showed up the first time, but have
> since become trite and obligatory. No condemnation proceedings were
> held or were required. When some arguably expressive feature seems to

Nice point. Can you give me an example, something found copyrightable at one point and later--the same thing---found to be a scene a faire? I tend to agree with you in principle that that might happen, but wonder how often it actually happens in practice.

Also, to the extent it does happen, doesn't it create perverse incentives: not to create something that you know could be copyrighted the day you created it, but that if it proved successful (widely bought/used) you'd lose? And besides, how does something become "obligatory" when it is still copyrighted?

        --Trotter Hardy

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