Re: Licensing pictures within an application

[Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org>]

MJ Ray writes:

> Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote:
>> MJ Ray writes:
>> > Sez law. If knowing that expression led me to write a new large
>> > expression a particular way, wouldn't you call it derived?
>> 
>> SCOX will no doubt be glad to hear that its "methods and processes"
>> copyright infringement theory is recognized by and agreeable to free
>> software advocates.  Or is that not what you meant?
>
> It seems unlikely I meant that, but your point is unclear
> to me because I've mostly ignored the SCO comedy.

What seems to be SCO's leading theory whereby IBM would be liable for
copyright infringement is that IBM improperly copied "methods and
processes" (or sometimes concepts) from UNIX code to Linux source
code, and that this copying makes Linux an unauthorized derivative
work of System V UNIX.  This seems to be the same theory you propound.
Curiously absent from SCO's many briefs are any specific rulings or
statutes which support that theory.

>> At least in the US, copyright law covers specific types of creative
>> expression.  Creative expression may be expressed at the textual
>> level, at the structural level, or potentially at some other level,
>> but a thing influenced by one form of creative expression is not
>> necessarily a derivative work of that expression.
>
> "Influenced by" seems a rather weaker example than my one of an
> expression leading me to write another particular expression.
> Are you claiming a work whose expression is part-determined by
> another expression is not necessarily a derivative of it?

In the absense of a definition for "part-determined", I cannot answer.
It seems a considerably stricter condition than your original "knowing
that expression led me to write a new large expression a particular
way".  There are many ways whereby one expression can inspire or
influence another expression, but where no protected creative
expression is copied, and where the second expression is not under law
a derivative of the original.

Michael Poole