Re: Copyright protection advice sought

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:37:30 -0000, "\(not quite so\) Fat Sam"
<samandjanet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've written a software application for windows systems which I believe will
be of use to outdoor photographers, artists and film-makers.
Originally, I wrote it as a tool for my own personal use, but I've become
aware that it would be of value to anyone who's involved in this area, and
so I've decided to make copies of it available for purchase.

I'm acutely aware that once it's out there in the wild so to speak, anyone
with a dishonest streak could simply copy it, change my copyright notice,
and re-sell it as their own.
Does anybody know of any measures I could take (legal rather than technical)
to minimise the risk of this, and also how best to deal with it if it does
happen?

It is your copyright program regardless of any notices they might
change. If someone were to sell it as their own product you would be
able to sue them. You would have to prove to a court on balance of
probability that they copied a significant proportion of your program.
After you show that the program is an exact copy (apart from minor
changes to text), the fact that you can produce the complete source
code when they cannot would be a clincher.

For additional security, an easy & cheap way to prove that you had the
program on or before a certain date is as follows: Zip up the
executable and all source code to a single file that you keep
somewhere it won't get lost. Take an MD5 hash of that Zip file. Buy
a classified advertisement in the "Misc" section of a national
newspaper in which you place your name (or other information that
would identify that it refers to yourself, e.g. your postcode) and the
MD5 hash (in hexadecimal format). Check the advert after the paper
comes out to ensure the hash has been printed correctly. You can now
prove beyond doubt that you were in possession of the ZIP file at the
date that the newspaper was published.

You cannot however protect your concept. If someone likes your idea
and writes their own program that does something identical, there is
absolutely nothing you can do about it. If your program is copied and
sold overseas, then unless there is a lot of money at stake, it will
not be worth pursuing. If someone got hold of the source code or
reverse-engineerd the source from the executable and changed it by a
small amount, it will result in a program that you would probably not
satisfy a court was copied from yours.

The best protection is therefore the technical solution that you did
not want to hear!

--
Cynic



.

Relevant Pages

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