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Legal Protection For Software: Still A Work In Progress, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz
Legal Protection For Software: Still A Work In Progress, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz
Articles
Software began as geekware-something written by programmers for programmers. Now, software is a business and consumer staple. Cryptic character-based user interfaces have given way to friendly graphical ones; multi-media is everywhere; people own multiple computers of varying sizes; computers are connected to one another across the globe; email and instant electronic messages have replaced letters and telephone calls for many people.
The issue of whether the law should protect software seems quaint to us now. Over the past twenty-five years, legislatures and courts have concluded that copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, and contract law all can be used to protect …
Thoughts On Dastar From A Copyright Perspective: A Welcome Step Toward Respite For The Public Domain, Lynn Mclain
Thoughts On Dastar From A Copyright Perspective: A Welcome Step Toward Respite For The Public Domain, Lynn Mclain
All Faculty Scholarship
Though other questions remain unresolved and other leaks unstemmed, Dastar is a welcome step towards regaining the public domain, and towards establishing that the confines of the public domain, with regard to nondeceptive reproduction of public domain works, and preparation of derivative works based upon them, must be delimited by only the copyright and patent laws.
This article will provide a background discussion of the copyright and patent schemes and their delineation of the public domain. It then will discuss the role of trademark law in that balance, and some of the case law regarding both § 43 of the …