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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!ucbvax!decwrl!infopiz!lupine!mellon From: mellon@ncd.com (Ted Lemon) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: UNIGRAM's article on the USL-BSDI suit Message-ID: <MELLON.92Aug7144654@pepper.ncd.com> Date: 7 Aug 92 21:46:54 GMT References: <7045@skye.ed.ac.uk> <KANDALL.92Aug4161214@globalize.nsg.sgi.com><1992Aug4.162951.25999@pony.Ingres.COM> <2969@isgtec.isgtec.com> Sender: news@NCD.COM Organization: Network Computing Devices, Inc. Lines: 54 Nntp-Posting-Host: pepper In-reply-to: bmw@isgtec.com's message of 6 Aug 92 15:34:42 GMT >To continue along this line, perhaps the consortium of Multics developers >should now launch a suit against USL? This discussion is getting downright silly. You can't copyright a concept. This is the most fundamental rule of copyrights. You can only copyright an expression, such as a book or a piece of source code - the concepts that went into the source code are fundamentally not copyrightable. The only way that AT&T can make any claims about infringements due to concepts that they "own" is on the basis of licenses that various parties have signed, or based on the idea that the expression known as Net2 is a derivative of the expression known as UNIX 32V, in the sense that Net2 contains actual UNIX 32V code. AT&T has shown no evidence that Net2 contains 32V code in their lawsuit - they are making that claim, but they will have to present evidence to justify their claim, and they have yet to do so. AT&T's claim that Net2 makes use of trade secrets which were inappropriately made public by CSRG, perhaps in collusion with officers of BSDI, is, to me, the more defensible claim. In order for AT&T to win in their suit against BSDI, they must prove both that Net2 contains trade secrets covered under the 32V license, that CSRG released those secrets in violation of the 32V license, and that BSDI was in some way covered by that same license (i.e., the officers of the corporation were constrained by the license agreement, or the corporation itself was constrained by the license agreement). In order for AT&T to win against the Regents of UC Berkeley, they only have to prove that Net2 contains trade secrets covered by the 32V license, and that Berkeley released those trade secrets in violation of the 32V license agreement. This will probably be a lot easier than making the case against BSDI. However, the bottom line is that without extending copyright protection into an entirely new realm, the copyrighting of ideas, USL and the courts can't put the genie back into the bottle. Trade secret protection is enforced by contract law, which means that only those who have signed the contract are constrained from releasing the trade secret. Once the trade secret has passed into the hands of the public, legally or no, it is no longer a trade secret, and even somebody who has signed the license can snarf it and hack on it freely. As it is so eloquently put in the text of the USL suit, there is ``no suitable remedy at law.'' _MelloN_ -- mellon@ncd.com Member, League for Programming Freedom | To learn how software patents could cost you your right to program, contact the LPF - league@prep.ai.mit.edu