copyrightable APIs? (was RE: namespace protection compatible wit

[phil hunt]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Angelo Schneider wrote:
> 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)

This will change under the new EU copyright law, where it will be illegal
to decrypt any encrypted file format (e.g. DVD) without the copyright
holder's permission.
 
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***** Phil Hunt ***** 
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