Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Geraint Paul Bevan <geraint.bevan AT ntlworld.com>]

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Steven wrote:

| What I have in mind is that perhaps there is some assertion that
| can be made in the copyright of the XML schema that specifies the
| copyright of instance documents.


I am not a lawyer and I am not an expert on copyright or patents.
However, I suspect that you may not be able to impose constraints on
users of your schema.

As far as UK copyright law is concerned, and it should be fairly similar
to the rest of the world, there are limits on what is subject to
copyright protection:


Quoting:
http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/faq/copyright/what_protected.htm


"Copyright gives rights to the creators of the following kinds of
material or "works":

"    * original literary works - for example, novels, newspaper
articles, lyrics for songs, and instruction manuals. Computer programs
are also a form of literary work protected by copyright, as are some
types of databases

[ a list of other things that certainly are not software ]

"Copyright does not protect ideas, names or titles, or functional or
industrial articles."



Consequently, your XML schema definition may not be protected by
copyright (as an industrial article) and I would very much doubt that
instantiation of it would be.

As far as patent protection is concerned, you only get that if you pay
for it and go through the whole process of applying through the patent
office. In Europe, software patents are not (yet) valid in most
circumstances. In the US they are, but you would probably need to
demonstrate some originality and technical innovation.

Trademarks do not apply in this case.

As a non-lawyer and non-expert in the field, I doubt that there is very
much "intellectual property" that you can protect.


- --
Geraint Bevan
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/geraint.bevan

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