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should you copyright your source code?

Thomas Stockwell has an interesting article over on Mc|Press Online debating the merits of copyrighting source code.

Last week, on December 14, 2004, intellectual property (IP) consultant Greg Aharonian filed a lawsuit in a San Francisco court, asking the court to remove software from protection of the U.S. copyright laws. According to Aharonian, companies can better protect software using patent law, and the copyrights are unduly creating obstacles to technological advancement.

While on the surface this lawsuit seems arcane, the question of copyrights vs. patents has significant importance to those of us who write code for a living. How the laws are interpreted reflects a confusing legal realm where the concept of IP stretches to the tools we use and our expression of ideas in computer code.

It is an interesting article (and, well worth the read) debating the use of patents vs. copyrights for the protection of source code.

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Posted by Douglas Sorocco, December 19, 2004 at 4:23 pm
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