Software Escrow: An enterprise resiliency tool every legal department should have in their toolbox (with Don Dennis Jr.)
IP|Trend: Discovering Source Code
The battle between open source software developers and the leading AI code generators will rage on. Despite the Court dismissing Plaintiffs’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 1202(b) claims with prejudice, it...more
Generally, an employer owns all rights in software code created by its employee in the scope of their employment. As outlined in the last edition of this series, this general rule typically applies to independent contractors...more
Roblox recently announced that it is working on generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that will help developers who build experiences on Roblox, to more easily create games and assets. The first two test tools create...more
As a previous Wilson Sonsini Alert reported, Snail Games USA Inc. and Wildcard Properties LLC (collectively, “Snail”) sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice to Valve Corporation (Valve) in order to...more
Non-profit organizations often use third-party images, photos, videos, or software in their everyday operations. It is often beneficial to leverage such materials that are licensed under “open licenses” because they are free...more
Due to the size and complexity of computer code, the software is usually created by a team of programmers. Consequently, to fully own software one must first make sure that each of the developers has relinquished any...more
Copyright protection is, generally speaking, formality-free in the US and other member states of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. A software rights owner does not have to publish, affix...more
To determine which computer program elements are copyrightable, the federal courts (which have exclusive jurisdiction over US copyright cases) commonly identify and analyze each of the program’s literal and non-literal...more
As patent practitioners know, the law sometimes defines technical topics in ways that do not always accord with how engineers and scientists understand those same topics. With that, since this series addresses legal...more
Copying From a Copyrighted Computer Program May Be Fair Use to the Extent Needed to Promote Adoption of the Use of Accrued Talents in Creating a New Software Platform - In Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., Appeal No....more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court ruling of non-infringement based on the inadmissibility of unauthenticated printouts of source code as evidence. Wi-LAN Inc. v. Sharp Elecs. Corp.,...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a district court’s summary judgment grant with respect to a copyright infringement claim related to technical drawings, and reversed the court’s summary judgment grant...more
On October 7, 2020, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Google v. Oracle, a decade-long battle challenging Oracle’s claim to own copyrights in certain aspects of its Java software platform that Google implemented in Android...more
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on October 7 in Google v. Oracle, which involves a Federal Circuit decision that we have discussed here. The primary question is whether the code of application programming interfaces...more
Learn how copyright can protect your software “Beyond Source Code” to cover both screen displays and UX, how the scope of software copyright law might impacted by the pending Supreme Court opinion in Oracle v. Google, and the...more
What is open-source software? To ask the question is almost to answer it. Open source software (OSS) simply describes software code that is distributed on an “open-source” basis – which means, in a way that allows others to...more
On November 15, 2019, the Supreme Court granted cert in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc. For many observers, this was a long time coming; the parties have been litigating the underlying case since August 2010, and from its...more
Many companies are now aware that if they incorporate open-source software into their products, there are specific terms and conditions that go along with the grant of the use of the particular OSS that are spelled out in...more
The Situation: Artificial intelligence ("AI") technology is exploding across virtually all industries. Technology companies are innovating at warp speed, and even companies that do not principally identify as "technology...more
A recent federal district court decision denied a motion to dismiss a complaint brought by Artifex Software Inc. (“Artifex”) for breach of contract and copyright infringement claims against Defendant Hancom, Inc. based on...more
A recent Ninth Circuit decision in Antonick v. Electronic Arts, Inc. (filed Nov. 22, 2016), shows some of the proof issues that a plaintiff may encounter in prosecuting claims for copyright infringement in connection with...more
Continuing the trend in recent years of injunctions becoming harder and harder to obtain, the Northern District of California denied a motion for a preliminary injunction where the defendant has allegedly copied the...more
On June 29, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Google, Inc.’s petition for writ of certiorari, leaving intact the Federal Circuit’s holding that Oracle’s Java API software, and particularly the API declaring source code, is...more
Heading into this year’s Super Bowl party season, there are two things every lawyer should be concerned about. First, why can’t your team get it together? Second, what do you do if you are asked to explain to your friends and...more
An ex-employee was recently ordered to pay his former employer AUD50,000 in damages after the Federal Court (Court) held that the employee had infringed copyright and breached his employment agreement and duty of...more