Perhaps Dan Burk could explain further exactly how copyright in computer programs prevents other people from learning from those programs, or improving upon them, in any way other than selling a program containing elements copied from them? How about Sega v. Accolade, for starters? As for the point that programs lose their value in a few months, if that were so, why do we have the Y2K problem? Maybe the latest rev of a packaged software product has a marketing life of less than a year, but that's not very meaningful -- I'd bet that the code base for any current Microsoft Office product, for example, has code going back to 1980-something. Certainly some of the key routines in Lotus Notes are ten years old.
Kerry L. Konrad
<k_konrad[_at_]stblaw.com>
Received on Thu Nov 12 1998 - 20:06:30 GMT
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