3 Count: Software Questions

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1: Jury Questions in Google-Oracle Trial Hint at Copyright Infringement

First off today, Rachel King at ZDNet reports that jury questions in the Oracle/Google trial may be hinting that the jury is on the path to finding that Google did infringe the copyright of the software giant. Oracle sued Google claiming that Google’s implementation of JAVA in its Android mobile operating system violated both patents and copyrights in Oracle’s version. Google denied this and the matter is currently at trial. However, the copyright portion of the trial has concluded and the jury is deliberating on those issues. Though Google seemed to fare well in testimony, the questions by the jury, targeting fair use and commercial use questions, seem to indicate that they may be on the way to finding in favor of Oracle on these questions. The jury deliberations began on Monday morning.

2: Copyright Can’t Block Software Reverse Engineering: Court

Next up today, Aoife White at Bloomberg Businessweek reports that the EU’s highest court has ruled on the issue of reverse engineering software and found that copyright law can not protect applications from it. The issue began when SAS Institute Inc. sued World Programming Ltd. for developing a system that copied SAS’ manuals. The court ruled, however, that there is no copyright over the function of a program, just the code, and reverse engineering without using any code is not an infringement. The ruling opens the door for others to create interoperable programs with various applications.

3: Pinterest Adds Feature to Answer Copyright Concerns

Finally today, Marie Szaniszlo at the Boston Herald reports that Pinterest has added a new feature to its service to help address copyright and attribution issues. Now, anything pinned from Flickr, Behance, Vimeo and YouTube will be clearly attributed even if that content is pinned from a third-party site. Further services are expected to be supported soon. This attribution can not be edited and includes a permanent link to the work and its author. Pinterest, a social network centered around the sharing of images, has long drawn criticism for its encouragement of users to grab and repin content from all over the Web, often with flawed attribution.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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