Re: a question about software and the work for hire doctrine

On 4/22/99, Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> wrote:
>
> My sense is that almost all commercially viable software packages
> will be "collective works," making contributions to them subject to
> this provision. I would be hard-pressed to find any commercially
> available computer program that consists of a single module (even
> if the final distributed packaging puts all modules into a single
> .EXE file).

This strikes me as a pretty controversial statement. A suite of separately identifiable applications (e.g. MS Office) might qualify as a collective work, so that each app could have separate copyright status and if there were an individual author of each the WFH rules could apply. Modules and components of a single application, however, should not be considered collective works (joint works at best).

Does Terry have any case law up his sleeve on this one?

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