Re: Is PDF copyrightable?

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Joseph P. Riolo <riolo[_at_]voicenet.com> wrote:
>
> After reviewing the briefs for Lotus v. Borland (which can be found
> at http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/lvb/), I am pretty sure
> that the PDF is not copyrightable. It bothers me very much that
> Adobe puts the false and misleading copyright notice in its manual
> for PDF. But, then, who expects Adobe to be charitable and honest
> at all the times?

I think that you have to be careful about Lotus v. Borland. After all, it is really only the law in that one circuit. (And it is simple enough to sue in another circuit).

My view is that in many of the other circuits the answer would probably come out the same, but it would be a bit closer question. I am sure that Adobe can make the argument that it was faced with a number of decisions when developing PDF format, and that many of the decisions made were arbitrary, and to some extent creative (and inherantly non-functional).

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Bruce E. Hayden                      bhayden[_at_]acm.org
Phoenix, Arizona                     bhayden[_at_]ieee.org
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