Re:Only Looking for a Mutually Beneficial Resoluti
Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on September 19, 2004 05:21 PM
I am not a lawyer, but I read Groklaw a lot... I do not know which country's laws control Mr Connolly's contract (if indeed he remembered that clause), but his complaint seems to be basically "someone stole my Intellectual Property". Let's ignore the fact that that phrase is perilously close to an oxymoron. Under U.S. law, then: 1)is the idea patented? Where's the patent? Given the number of people who feel this is an obvious, non-original function, it may not be patentable, even if one has been issued. 2)is the idea a trade secret? Not anymore. Once the secret is widely know, it's not a secret any more and loses its legal protection as such. 3)is the IMPLEMENTATION copyrighted? Who knows for sure; however, the IDEA is NOT copyrightable. Enforcing copyright on a 9 line code snippet, although possible, doesn't seem easy since an obvious implementaion of a trivial function is difficult to claim ownership of. Given that Mambo's implementation does something (at least slightly) different, the code may well not be a derivative work under copyright law. Sorry, Mr. Connolly, but those are the only 3 forms of "Intellectual Property". Perhaps you could offer us some vague idea of what it is you think you own, that is legally enforceable?
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Re:Only Looking for a Mutually Beneficial Resoluti
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on September 19, 2004 05:21 PMI do not know which country's laws control Mr Connolly's contract (if indeed he remembered that clause), but his complaint seems to be basically "someone stole my Intellectual Property". Let's ignore the fact that that phrase is perilously close to an oxymoron. Under U.S. law, then:
1)is the idea patented? Where's the patent? Given the number of people who feel this is an obvious, non-original function, it may not be patentable, even if one has been issued.
2)is the idea a trade secret? Not anymore. Once the secret is widely know, it's not a secret any more and loses its legal protection as such.
3)is the IMPLEMENTATION copyrighted? Who knows for sure; however, the IDEA is NOT copyrightable. Enforcing copyright on a 9 line code snippet, although possible, doesn't seem easy since an obvious implementaion of a trivial function is difficult to claim ownership of. Given that Mambo's implementation does something (at least slightly) different, the code may well not be a derivative work under copyright law.
Sorry, Mr. Connolly, but those are the only 3 forms of "Intellectual Property". Perhaps you could offer us some vague idea of what it is you think you own, that is legally enforceable?
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