Software Makes The World Go Round

Software, the ever changing, expanding net of code that defines the development of our Internet world. You can pick your vehicle - wild and free open source, grimly functional Windows, free apps from Google, free video sharing, the blogoshpere, and virtual communities all await. Ecommerce that once seemed it might be all about virtual shopping carts and html bricks has burst its surly bonds and is creating new opportunities in a world that surely needs them. Software, used right, can help us to make our world more efficient, greener, less polluted, and healthier for all species. Used wrong, it can catapult us into oblivion as fast as you can say “genomic warfare” or “nuclear terror.” So lets all write nice programs, eh?

Looking at the legal issues, most people usually want to know about patent protection for their software. Let me say it is difficult to get, very expensive and time consuming, and once you have a patent, it costs millions to defend it. Excellent for drug companies and others with deep pockets and long timelines. So, while many programs might be theoretically patentable, there is little concrete incentive to follow that path.

Software programs can be copyrighted, and it is always advisable to do so. The US Copyright Office will be happy to copyright a program that is recorded on a CD, along as you send it to them along with the registration fee, a signed Form TX, and the first twenty five pages of the code printed out. Copyrighting software, and just about anything else, is so easy you should try it just to experience how simple the act is that makes Bill Gates different from the rest of us. He has intellectual property rights.

Software can also be protected through encoding, and under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s a crime to crack the encoding that protects a registered copyrighted work. That’s one reason DVDs haven’t gotten cheaper faster, and why DVD rippers don’t really exist.

Software can also be protected by trade secret protection, that should always be part of any software licensing agreement. Negotiating software licensing agreements and advising in licensing negotiations is a skill that requires awareness of all the things that go wrong and right in a business relationship that is built around the provision of an information processing service - which is what software provides. To consult with Charles Carreon about a software licensing project, please call 520-841-0835.

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