[Commons-Law] British Court Issues Bizarre Copyright Ruling

[Sunil Abraham]

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/09/17/1548221.shtml?tid=123&tid=185&tid=99

British Court Issues Bizarre Copyright Ruling

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday September 17, @03:01PM
from the thought-we-settled-this-already dept.
dipfan writes "In a re-run of the Lotus v Borland case that went to the US
Supreme Court, the High Court in London has allowed a copyright
infringement battle between two rival airline booking programs to go to
trial, despite agreement by all sides that the two programs are written in
different code. The airline Easyjet is being sued by software house
Navitaire, creators of an online booking system called Openres, over
Easyjet's booking system named eRes, developed by Bulletproof Technologies
of California. Openres was written in Cobol, while eRes was written in
Visual Basic, and the programs are also different in structure. But,
according to the FT article: 'Parallels had been drawn between
appropriating the "functional structure" of a computer system and
commandeering the plot of a book, the judge noted.' If Navitaire wins,
then any program that works like another program - even if written in
different code - could be vulnerable. What happened to the principle that
you can't copyright an idea? Bulletproof is counter-suing Navitaire in the
district of Utah.



-- 
Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org
MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs'
314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA
Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples 
then you and I will still each have one apple. 
But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas,
then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw