1.5 Idea vs. expression

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Protecting Business Innovations via Copyright

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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Protecting Business Innovations via Copyright

31 notes

Protecting Business Innovations Via Copyright Watch Course Overview: https://youtu.be/mUja4iwbrTE Intellectual property rights (IPR) has a great impact on innovation development and society. In Science, Engineering, and Business, we seek to create wealth through innovation in products, designs, manufacturing processes, and business systems or models. However, innovation leaders often FAIL to benefit from their discoveries and inventions when they are unable to adequately protect those innovations. This course provides learners with an understanding of Copyright law and how it can be used to protect business innovation. The course focus is on protecting innovations with copyright as one of several tools that can be used by companies and individuals to protect creative innovations. In additional to learning about how copyright works in theory, we will also discuss situations in which copyright might not be effective in protecting innovations, and will focus on the legal issues involved from a practical business perspective rather than from a purely legal viewpoint. This course is one part of a four course series focusing on protection of business innovations using copyright, patent, trademark and strategy, and these four courses may be taken in any order that is most beneficial to students interested in learning about protecting innovation.

À partir de la leçon

Introduction to Copyright

Welcome to this course on Protecting Business Innovations via Copyright! How do companies protect their intellectual property, creative innovations and ensure they keep their customers happy? Over the next four weeks you will gain insight on how companies navigate the world of Copyright, Copyright limitations, Derivative work and Software Protection. As you go through the materials, you may have your own copyright related questions or scenarios that pop-up, feel free to post them in the discussion forum so we can try to apply strategic approaches learned in the course. Take some time to review the assignments, grading and general course guidelines for this course. Week 1 will cover the basics of copyright and will introduce the general terms that will be used in later weeks.

1.2 What is copyright?9:24

1.3 How do I get copyright?9:29

1.4 What is excluded?9:58

1.5 Idea vs. expression9:13

1.6 The rights granted9:58

Rencontrer les enseignants

Theodore Henry King CLARK
Associate Professor
Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management Department

In our last session we talked about the fact that ideas cannot be protected.

An expression can.

But this is not quite so easy and reality,

to know the difference between idea and expression.

So in this session.

We're going to explore that and explore what do we mean by idea,

what do we mean by expression?

What's the difference between an idea and an expression of that idea?

And this is important because the expression is protectable,

the idea is not protectable.

But where that boundary is is not a bright line where you can say this is

clearly an idea, this is clearly an expression.

There's sort of a blurry area between the two.

But we'll try to illustrate some examples or

principles that gives some idea of idea versus expression.

My first example that I am going to talk about of idea versus expression

involves Star Wars.

In the movie Star Wars, there is this scene where the ship jumps

to light speed and you see the stars becoming vectors.

This is beautiful.

And I remember being in the first Star Wars movie.

Now I'm showing my age.

But I was in the first Star Wars movie on opening day in

the theater watching the audience and as they cut to light speed

the entire audience used in expression that is much more common in China than

in the US where the entire audience went, whoa.

This was cool.

This was great to see this visualization,

was a great insight.

Now, the idea of faster than light travel had been around a long time so

there's nothing really original about faster than light travel.

A lots of people go at hyper-speed or warped speed or hyper-drive or

something else.

So, faster than light travel not new and not protectable, not copyright.

Star Wars expression of this jump to light speed

as its artistic illustration of this, as vectors of stars,

that is an artistic expression, and that was a new idea.

A new concept.

Don't know if it really happens that way.

Don't know if it's a real idea.

But it was a cool idea.

And it's a cool expression of an idea.

Another example of artistic expression and

the questions that the court had to address and in this case of what is

protectable expression or what is not protectable?

In this case, involve both an idea and

a method of operation as the issue under dispute and

this is can Lotus 1-2-3

which was the dominant form of spread sheets in the mid 1990's

protect its menu against being copied for its spreadsheets.

The menu is the commands at the top of the screen when you look at Lotus when you

look at Excel.

These things, like go to data, transpose,

transform, sort, whatever.

This menu of operations, is it a method of operation?

Or is it an idea, which cannot be protected?

Or is it an artistic expression?

And this is what the court had to fight about.

And the court, the judge in this case said, this is a tough one.

I'm not sure.

And the judge said this was a matter of first impression in the court.

This was new, it's a new idea.

And it was tough decision.

But, the judgement of the court was,

that Lotus had protectable expression and Borland,

who had copied Lotus menu to make their software compatible with Lotus.

Borland used separate code, did every separate, didn't copy anything,

except the menu, the judgement of the court involved the issue of,

are you copying art or are you copying ideas?

And they said the menu is kind of an idea but

it's also an artistic expression with choice of words and

they said some things are too close to an idea like, File, Save As,

that's an idea, you can copy that, that's too basic, that's a concept.

You can't copy protect that, you can't copyright that.

But a data two way what if table, that's copyrightable expression.

And so one of the things that was clear

is the original work had to form the basis of a copy and it did.

Borland made their software compatible with Lotus and

so the original work formed the basis for the menu being copied.

The debate was whether that is excludable from copyright as an idea or

expression or maybe as a method of operation which Borland argued or

whether it is protectable original work creative expression as Lotus argued.

Both sides have merit.

You can understand both sides.

You can see why both sides might be right in this case.

It's kind of an interesting case because it illustrates sort of the boundary line

of this area.

The court ruling was intriguing because the district court said Lotus wins.

Lotus has the right to the copyright.

Borland infringed on Lotus and they must redesign their code.

So Borland redesigned it.

But Borland kept the menus the same for the first letter of the menu and

allowed them to run macros, which are kinds of mini programs

within the spreadsheet that could run Lotus programs in Borland's software.

They just kept compatibility with the first letter of a lot of commands.

A slash and a letter would,

would run a command string within the used spreadsheet and they kept that.

So they went back to court and the court said no even that

is a copyrightable expression and Borland said no way.

We could buy your first ruling, fine,

we redesigned our software, we made the menu separate, but at least

let us keep the first letter that's compatible so we can run the same code.

And the court said no.

That's copyrightable expression.

The circuit court, the appellate court, said no, Borland wins.

Because this menu is not copyrightable expression.

It's a method of operation or it's an idea and therefore, Borland has the right

to use that in their software and they have the right to use the macros.

So Borland wins.

Lotus, of course, didn't like that ruling, and said, no, we don't agree.

So they appealed again, and you can do that.

You go to court.

You don't like the ruling, you appeal to a higher court.

The highest court in the land is the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court was tied.

There were only eight justices at the time.

That happens from time to time, where one of the Supreme Court justices died or

maybe one is out sick, or one recuses himself, so

we have eight judges instead of nine.

Normally, they have nine.

In this case, they had eight, and the court was evenly divided.

So, who wins, if it's tie?

Well, if it's a tie, you go back to the Circuit Court decision and that was where

Borland won so the court just before the Supreme Court rule and Borland won.

But it was close.

It was really close.

It wasn't clear so this says, this is a boundary line issue.

This is a good illustration of idea versus expression, we're not sure.

It's close.

So, ruled in favor of Borland, but barely.

So that gives you an idea of idea versus expression,

gives you a couple of illustrations.

And that's the end of this session.

We'll go on and talk about more aspects of copyright in our next session.

We look forward to seeing you.

Thank you.

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