Impact
The Lotus decision establishes a distinction in copyright law between the interface of a software product and its implementation. The implementation is subject to copyright. The public interface may also be subject to copyright to the extent that it contains expression (for example, the appearance of an icon). However, the set of available operations and the mechanics of how they are activated are not copyrightable. This standard allows software developers to create original clones of copyrighted software products without infringing the copyright.
Read more about this topic: Lotus Dev. Corp. V. Borland Int'l, Inc.
Famous quotes containing the word impact:
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