On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 10:22 PM, George Neuner <gneuner2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-- >> That's the patent database. Microsoft tried to get a *copyright*. I
>I don't think in general you can copyright a file format.
And you absolutely can *patent* use of any data format for a given
purpose [assuming the purpose itself is patentable].
Yes, I wasn't addressing patents, just addressing the issue of copyright that you raised.
You can copyright damn near anything. Under the Berne convention, the
simple fact of authorship conveys certain rights even if the "work" is
a verbatim copy of something else.
The only rules - at least in the US - are that your _expression_ of the
idea is not known to be common usage, and that it is neither a
verbatim copy, nor a derivative of a previously *registered* work.
That is patently untrue. And really you don't have to be a lawyer to form an opinion about this.
From the US Copyright Office:
To be copyrightable, a work must qualify as an original work of authorship, meaning that it must have been created independently and contain a sufficient amount of creativity.
Copyright law expressly excludes copyright protection for “any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied.”
A recipe is a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish of food. A mere listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable.
Cheers,
Ken
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