Re: IRAF component relicensed

[Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com>]

Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> writes:

> On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 03:45:40PM -0500, Justin Pryzby wrote:
>> This is probably hotly debated, but how do math-algorthm copyrights
>> work?
>
> Articles about mathematics, and specific expressions of algorithms,
> are copyrightable, but the concepts aren't.
>
> In the U.S. 17 USC 102 states:
>
>    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 international law, article 2 of the Berne convention states:
>
>    It shall, however, be a matter for legislation in the countries of the
>    Union to prescribe that works in general or any specified categories
>    of works shall not be protected unless they have been fixed in some
>    material form.
>
> Which I think meant that the rules could vary from country to country.
> However, WIPO has since come out and stated (in article 2 of the treaty):
>
>    Copyright protection extends to expressions and not to ideas,
>    procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such.
>
> Is that clear enough?

And this is probably the reason we have thousands of (probably
invalid) software patents instead.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@inprovide.com