Managing IP Magazine > Archive > June 2012 > Copyright: Computer programs not protected in Europe

Copyright: Computer programs not protected in Europe



30 May 2012


Europe's highest court has ruled that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language cannot be protected by copyright.

The Court of Justice of the EU went on to say in its judgment that anyone who buys a licence for a computer program is allowed – as a rule – to observe, study or test its functioning to determine the ideas and principles that underlie the program.

The Court was ruling in a dispute between SAS Institute and World Programming. SAS filed a lawsuit after WPL launched a software program able to execute applications written in SAS Language. WPL's program did not literally copy that of SAS but did emulate much of the functionality of SAS's data-processing software and could understand and interpret SAS data.

Questions in the case were referred by the High Court of England and Wales last year. The questions concern the interpretation of the 1991 Directive on the legal protection of computer programs (which says that computer programs are protected as literary works) and the 2001 Directive on copyright in the information society.

The Court set out what third parties cannot do: it said that program authors can prevent someone from procuring the part of the source code or object code relating to the programming language or to the format of data files used in a computer program and creating similar elements in its own computer program.

India

Injunction ordered against ISPs. The High Court of Judicature in Madras issued an injunction last month ordering internet service providers to prevent their users from pirating the film "3". A number of video sharing sites, including Pirate Bay and Daily Motion, were blocked. But while this type order is common in cable TV disputes, many lawyers questioned whether the ISPs could effectively monitor infringement and enforce the order.

UK

Pirate Bay blocked. The High Court in London has ordered five ISPs to block access to file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. Mr Justice Arnold issued blocking orders against Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2, and Virgin Media. The BPI says it sought orders against six ISPs under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 after it failed to persuade them to block the site voluntarily.

US

Jury declines to rule on fair use. A US jury has found that Google infringed "the overall structure, sequence and organization" of 37 of Oracle's copyrighted Application Programming Interface (API) packages. But the San Francisco jury could not decide whether Google's use of those works constituted fair use under US law. It also found that Google's use of the documentation for those 37 packages did not infringe.

Malaysia

Copyright reforms help avoid US censure. Malaysia's moves to boost the protection it offers copyright owners by creating a DMCA-style safe harbour provision for ISPs and content aggregators such as YouTube helped the country avoid being placed on the 2012 s301 Watch List. The amendments to the country's laws came into effect on March 1. One important change was the creation of a copyright registry.


The Linked Content Coalition was launched in April, a group of copyright owners in the publishing, TV, film and news media sectors.

The implementation of the Digital Economy Act in the UK has been pushed back to 2014 at the earliest because secondary legislation needs to be amended.

The Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the EU said in UsedSoft v Oracle that creators of computer programs should be allowed to prevent people from selling so-called used licences.

The Regional Court of Hamburg has become the first to rule that YouTube must use filtering technology to check for copyright infringement, in this case for repeated uploads.

Australian telecoms company Optus is to file for leave to appeal a court decision in its high-profile battle over TV streaming rights.

The US Trade Representative published its S301 Priority Watch List last month, an annual list that names and shames countries that it claims have failed to protect the IP rights of its companies and citizens. On the 2012 list are Algeria, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela.


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