copyrightable APIs? (was RE: namespace protection compatible wit

[Angelo Schneider]

Hi!

In Europe APIs are not "copyright able".
No idea about the US.

However if you publich them in a book, the book of course is
copyrighted.
However you can not prevent anyone to write a software against a given
API.
Same is true for data formats. (In Europe dataformats e.g. a flat file
format for a word processor are not copyright able)

Regards,
     Angelo

Forrest J Cavalier III wrote:
> 
> > ----------
> > Von:  Forrest J Cavalier III[SMTP:FORREST at MIBSOFTWARE.COM]
> > Gesendet:     Freitag, 20. April 2001 13:50:06
> > An:   license-discuss at opensource.org
> > Cc:   forrest at mibsoftware.com
> > Betreff:      copyrightable APIs? (was RE: namespace protection compatible wit
> > Diese Nachricht wurde automatisch von einer Regel weitergeleitet.
> >
> How can you copyright an API?  Isn't it simply a
> collection of facts?
> 
> Perhaps you could copyright the formal parameter
> names, and certainly the documentation in a header
> file.
> 
> But the facts of
>      function name,
>      return type(s)
>      parameter type(s)
> are just facts.  There is no creative expression involved.
> 
> Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software  Voice 570-992-8824
> http://www.rocketaware.com/ has over 30,000 links to
> source, libraries, functions, applications, and documentation.


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Angelo Schneider         OOAD/UML         Angelo.Schneider at oomentor.de
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