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cc-licenses - Re: Copyright of derivative work released under a CC licence

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Branko Collin" <collin AT xs4all.nl>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Copyright of derivative work released under a CC licence
  • Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 15:20:03 +0100


On 3 Dec 2004, at 13:55, Rob Myers wrote:

> If you are copying an appearance exactly, that's breaking copyright.
> If you are translating code or reproducing it from looking at the
> code, likewise. But Apple couldn't sue Microsoft for "stealing" either
> the equivalent functionality of MacOS (down to function names and
> effects) or the equivalent behaviour and appearance of MacOS (which
> they tried to claim as trade dress). And SCO aren't doing very well
> with their theory of code derivation.

As far as I am aware (having seen and worked with both their OSes on
numerous occasions and in numerous incarnations), Microsoft did not
literally copy the visuals of Apple. And of course, Apple did not
invent WIMP systems either. By the time Microsoft started working on
Windows (1981, IIRC), Apple did not even have a Mac OS (which was
first published in 1984). That is why Apple needed to claim to own
something silly like "look and feel", which they would have gotten
away with if they had branded their "look & feel", rather than
'copyrighted' it.

In my reply I was assuming that the OP was copying a visual
appearance literally, and I assumed such for the following reasons:

- because the template is for a blog system, that has only a few
different views (the front page, the article page, the comments page,
and the interface for leaving comments--often the last three are more
or less collapsed into one); there is not much difference in looks
you can get.

- because the author tried to base his work on that of another; there
would have been little sense in that if he did not try to copy the
visual appearance literally.

--
branko collin
collin AT xs4all.nl




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