Law Commons^™

How Can Whelan V. Jaslow And Lotus V. Borland Both Be Right? Re-Examining The Economics Of Computer Software Reuse, Michael Risch

Michael Risch

The basic economic goal of copyright law is to balance an author's incentive to create with his or her ability to build on prior work in order to maximize social wealth. This balance is extremely important for computer software. On the one hand, software is often expensive to create and companies therefore need protection in order to recoup their investment. On the other hand, software is often expensive to create and companies can save costs by reusing pre-existing work. Quite often, the same companies that want to protect their software also want to use pre-existing work. As a result of …