Off Topic: Copyright Decision

["Richard Henderson" Richard.Henderson@xxxxxxxx]

Here is an excerpt from the November 8, 2005, " News of Change" Newsletter from C|Net.Com about a Supreme Court refusal to hear a copyright case. I think that several members of this list will find this article to be of interest.

" High court won't hear programmer's appeal
By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: November 8, 2005, 8:42 AM PST

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by a programmer who sued his former employer for
changing his programs' source code.

William Krause of New York first charged in 1996 that Titleserv, a title insurance firm, had
committed copyright infringement when it altered eight programs he had written for the company over
a decade of work.

Krause left the programs, which were designed to manage client information, on Titleserv's servers
when he quit working for the company. He placed locks on the code and stipulated that Titleserv
could run--but not alter--the programs, prompting a lawsuit from the company, which claimed it
needed to make code tweaks in order to fix bugs and to perform other "routine" functions.
Company employees ultimately picked the locks and made the changes they said they needed.

A federal trial court ruled in favor of Titleserv, and an appeals court upheld that judgment last
year (click for PDF of opinion).

 In both cases, the judges found that Titleserv was not at fault, because under U.S. copyright law,
it's legal for people to make changes to software, provided that they own a physical copy of the
program, the changes constitute "an essential step in the utilization" of the program, and
the software is used "in no other manner."

The Supreme Court on Monday denied Krause's appeal without comment.