Intellectual property Toolkit
Story: Judge rules computer programs can be patented
It is in the compiler.
When someone knocks up a method in machine code for the first time there may be a slight issue, but apart from that all these programs are written in a high level language which is compiled and thus the generated code is down to the compiler. Even worse, the direction nowadays is to use system library routines and so with windows.NET surely MS would own the patent.
Computer programming is done in a language just as written communication. You can copyright a story (set of word instructions in a determined order), but you can't patent it.
Same with computer programs, if someone looks at your end result and generates a program to achieve similar without recourse to your code, how can yours be inventive as the method is obvious.
If they can't then you are covered anyway.
We would all now be using GEM or the DOS interface as no one could have copied/improved apart from the original programmers.
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