Re: every IP form

From: <ArborLaw[_at_]aol.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 01:24:20 -0400

Dan Agin writes:
>
> PKZIP, the compression software, evidently has a patent number,
> a copyright registration, and a trademark registration. That's a
> single item, not something with multiple parts each under
> different protection.

A little hair splitting: it's true this is a single item of manufacture, but once again, different qualities are being protected by different modes.

I haven't looked at the patent, but I suspect that it is for the data structure of the compression utility itself, and it is probably language-independent, ie, if at all possible software claims should read on the data structure and should be independent of platform.

In contrast, while the software copyright would extend from literal code down to the "structure, sequence and organization" of the code, it is the code as actually written that is being protected. But I grant that SSO protection provides a fair amount of theoretical overlap with patent protection for the very same thing.

The trademark protection has nothing to do with the code. It would be the name "PKZIP" that would be protected by trademark, so there is no overlap.

Carol Shepherd
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==--====-==-=-=-==--=--====--=-=-=-====---===-=-=-====---===---= Received on Wed Sep 18 1996 - 05:29:14 GMT