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Protecting Innovation In Computer Software, Biotechnology, And Nanotechnology, Dennis S. Karjala

Dennis S Karjala

In the 1970’s, paying virtually no attention to the fundamental distinction between patent and copyright subject matter, Congress decided to protect computer programs as a “literary work” under copyright law. As a result, a work of technology for the first time was consciously placed under the protective umbrella of a statute designed for art, music, and literature. While the vulnerability of computer program code to cheap and easy verbatim copying supplied a policy basis for “anti-copy” protection of code, courts often analogized these congressionally anointed “literary works” to broadly protected novels and plays rather than thinly protected technical specifications and …