Copyright protection of software: a convergence of US and European jurisprudence?

摘要

The SAS and Oracle decisions are significant for a lot more than their jurisprudential value. The rulings provide a clear indication that both European and US courts are unwilling to grant broad copyright protection to non-coding elements of software. The idea-expression dichotomy gives rise to difficult questions of degree and scope for all copyright works; in relation to software however, the problems are more acute because unlike other works computer programs are essentially functional. The tricky issue has always been how to stop others from misappropriating how a particular program implements that functionality without monopolising the underlying idea. In an attempt to resolve this conflict, the courts in both Europe and the US appear to be taking a cautious and a narrow approach to the scope of software copyright.