[License-review] For Approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License

[Pamela Chestek]

On 4/30/2019 11:11 AM, Carlo Piana wrote:
> On 30/04/19 16:59, Richard Fontana wrote:
>> Have you given thought to the different legal situation in the EU
>> under SAS Institute Inc. v. World Programming Ltd.
>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute_Inc_v_World_Programming_Ltd)?
>> I would be curious to hear from lawyers in Europe about this.
> Yes, under SAS Institute v World Programming Language API are by far
> excluded from copyrightability, even if they used the same vocabulary,
> structure, sequence, and the same applies to programming languages and
> file formats.
>
> Indeed I worked with other lawyers behind the scenes (pro bono, alas!) 
> so that this happened when the case hit the ECJ. I could not expand into
> it very much given the names that floated around in this thread and the
> people involved. So now it's settled law.
>
This relates to my earlier question about the interpretation of "public
performance" if the US Supreme were to decide APIs are not
copyrightable. I read the CAL as still requiring the licensing of the
new program under a open source license, and wonder if that may be true
too in the EU. It is muddled even more in the EU, where there is no
"public performance" concept. Instead it may be treated as
"communicating to the public." However, that concept is in the Infosec
Directive, not the Computer Program Directive, confusing things further.
Or at least it does for this US lawyer.

Pam

Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
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Raleigh, NC 27602
919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal.com
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