Overview

A recent Advocate General Opinion invited the Court of Justice of the EU to suggest that the protection of a computer program is not confined to the literal elements of that program, such as the source code and object code, but extends to other elements which express the author's own intellectual creation (such as a programmer's preparatory design work.

As a result, developers will only be able to replicate the function or ‘look and feel' of an existing computer program, as long as they do not copy any of the underlying source or object codes or any other elements which are copyright protected, such as the preparatory design material.

In this briefing, Field Fisher analyse the case which prompted this change and outline the legal and technical ramifications for computer programmers.

Click 'View Briefing' to learn more.