This is a good question and I believe Paul nailed it as far as modern law goes, but the whole situation only shows that copyright law, patent law or any other law are initially flawed as they are based on a false assumption that it is possible to treat ideas as property. So a situation as you described is possible and actually happens a lot in the patent system, which seems more strict and where it is not granted by default but you have to register stuff, yet they often end up with the same thing patented several times by different people.
So yeah, it is a mess.
--
Louigi Verona
http://www.louigiverona.ru/
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