SAS Institute lawsuit with World Programming: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:43, 3 May 2012

Revision as of 12:55, 4 May 2012

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The [[SAS Institute]], creators of the [[SAS System]] filed a '''lawsuit against [[World Programming|World Programming Limited]]''', creators of [[World Programming System]] (WPS). The dispute was whether World Programming had infringed copyrights on SAS Institute Products, and Manuals and whether World Programming used SAS Learning Edition to reverse engineer SAS system in violation with its term of usage.

The case is interesting because World Programming did not have access to the SAS Institute's source code, and so the court considered the merits of a copyright claim based on observing functionality only. The European Committee for Interoperable Systems say that the case is important to the software indusryindustry.<ref>http://www.ecis.eu/2011/12/ecis-symposium-1-december-2011-bibliotheque-solvay-video-audio-presentations-and-related-materials/</ref> Some observers say the case is as important as the [[Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Int'l,_Inc.|Borland versus Lotus case]].

The [[European Court of Justice|EU Court of Justice]] ruled that copyright protection does not extend to the software functionality, the programming language used and the format of the data files used by the program. It stated that there is no copyright infringement when a company which does not have access to the source code of a program studies, observes and tests that program to create another program with the same functionality.<ref>{{cite news | url = http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-02/copyright-can-t-block-software-reverse-engineering-court.html | title = Copyright Can't Block Software Reverse Engineering: Court | author = Aoife White | publisher = Bloomberg | date = 2012-05-02 | accessdate = 2012-05-02 }}</ref>