Re: The GPL and Patents: ROFL

[Hyman Rosen]

On 8/19/2010 3:07 PM, RJack wrote:
> "17 USC § 102. Subject matter of copyright: In general.
>
> (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
> authorship extend to 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 in such work."
>
> "In no case does copyright protection... extend to... *regardless of the
> form* in which it is described... or embodied in such work."

Notice how this anti-GPL crank elides the idea, procedure, etc. phrase
with an ellipsis. Of course, without that elision, the copyright law says
that protection extends to the work but not the idea, exactly the way it
has always been construed. That's what the court says in Atari v. Nintendo
<http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1015.htm> and it's what the
court says in Apple v. Franklin
<<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10063204125696546680>.