🚀 go-pugleaf

The Wall Street Journal today has an article about the Ashton-Tate/Fox
lawsuit.  The judge ruled that A-T isn't entitled to copyright protection on
the dBASE language since the language was based on public domain material
and A-T concealed that fact in its copyright registration.

This is not a blow against look-and-feel copyrights. The judge did NOT rule
that the material would not have been copyrightable.

However, some people have argued that putting code in the public domain is
not sufficient protection against "hoarders" who might take PD material,
make small changes, and claim to own the entire work.  In this case, A-T
tried to take a work in public domain (the NASA precursor to dBASE-II, which
I've forgotten the name of), add to it, and copyright the whole thing.  They
failed.

From what the article says, they have even lost copyright protection on any
changes they made to the PD material, because of "knowingly" misleading the
Copyright Office.  This means that would-be "hoarders" of public domain
material must be careful to reveal the PD basis of their code, lest
they lose copyright even on their original work.

Rich (rfm@eng.sun.com)