From: Eckhart Köppen (eck1001_at_gmx.net)
Date: Tue Sep 23 2003 - 23:43:01 PDT
On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 16:02:09 -0500, Rich Oliver wrote:
> Even your grocery list is copyrighted *automatically.*
Don't know how it works exactly in the US, but in Germany, there is a
certain requirement regarding the originality of the work. As an aside,
there is also a split between usage rights (close to US copyrights) and
rights of the creator (protecting the creator from somebody else taking
the original work, changing it to something completely different and
then saying the original author did that).
For trivial things such as grocery lists you don't get copyright
protection (otherwise, people might get into trouble doing their
shopping ;), however, your rights protecting you as the author are
always granted and can in fact not even be taken away or signed away by
you.
In this case (SER-001), it is a blatant copyright infringement. David
won't lose his copyright if he doesn't do anything (that's trademark
law and to some extent also patent law), but Ferdi is skating on
extremely thin ice here. The kind of ice you have on a nice hot summer
day. The SER-001 definitely passes the triviality test.
Eckhart
PS: Of course, you need to take action if you see that your copyright
is infringed to minimize damages. So you can't sit and wait, knowing
that somebody has infringed your copyright, get some nice damage
figures and the sue.
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