EU Court confirms that copyright is limited to code, not its function

As reported by my partner, Ron Moscona, according to the recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“ECJ”) in SAS Institute Inc. (“SAS Institute”) v World Programming Ltd (“WPL”), the defendant did not infringe the claimant’s copyright by effectively reverse engineering the SAS software and writing a new program closely emulating the functionality of the SAS software. The decision of the ECJ lays down an important statement of principles in relation to the extent to which copyright protects computer programs (but not their functionality) under European Union law, although in respect of some practical aspects of the matter the Court’s decision fails to provide useful guidance.


Check out Ron's full article on this case by clicking here.


Thanks, Ron!