Re: Who owns computer languages?

Todd Evans (evans@connectnet.com) wrote:


> Our company lawyer is concerned that we might be infringing on the
> vendor's intellectual rights. Do you know of any cases of late which
> set precedence in this area?


This topic has come up in comp.lang.asm.x86 early this year.
Basically we have the author of a very simple language interpreter
insisting that the syntax of the interpreted language is his
intellectual property. The case never went to court, the only person
who really lost out decided to withdraw his parrot of the original out
of respect for the original author. Still, there was quite an
argument about it before that author heard from his lawyer that it
shouldn't be discussed in the open like that... Yet, they are quite
confident that they would win based on it being intellectual property
if it went to court.


The language is named TERSE and the author is Jim Neil if you want to
peruse deja news and see what some of the discussion was like...


David
[Too bad it never went to court. He'd have lost and it would be a useful
precedent. -John]




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