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Difference between software copyright and software patents?

Can you please explain me the difference between a 'copyright' and 'patent' with regard to software? And also please let me know the procedure to obtain a copyright and patent in India for software. Can we also patent/copyright a unique business model? I am curious to know if eBay and Amazon have patents for their websites and also their business models. Thanks a lot for your help.


Dave's Answer:

I'm really not particularly qualified to answer this definitively, so I forwarded your question along to an intellectual property attorney friend of mine, Paul Overhauser, of Overhauser Law Offices, LLC, and here's what he had to say:

A copyright gives you the right to stop someone else from "copying" (or using) software that you own. However, if someone else creates their own software from scratch, that would not be "copying" so there is nothing you could do about that.

However a patent protects an "idea." If someone else uses your patented idea, they are infringing, and you can get a court to make them stop, even if they just happened to come up with the same idea on their own.

Think of it this way. Microsoft can prevent someone for distributing unauthorized "copies" of Microsoft Word, but they can't prevent Corel from distributing WordPerfect. This is because Microsoft has only a copyright on Word, not a patent.

I'm not sure how to get copyright and legal protection in India, but in the U.S. you can find lots of great information at Copyright.gov and The US Patent & Trademark Office.

Unique business models can be patented. For example Amazon was recently issued a couple of controversial patents:

  • 6,963,867 - Search query processing to provide category-ranked presentation of search results
  • 6,963,848 - Methods and system of obtaining consumer reviews

You can find copies of these patents at USPTO.gov.

Thanks for that concise and informative answer, Paul!


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Reader Comments To Date: 2

Daniel Escasa said, on December 10, 2005 3:53 AM:

The other difference is that copyrights are valid throughout territories that have signed the Berne Convention. OTOH, a patent is territory-specific -- i.e., valid only in the country that granted the patent. So, a patent granted in India is non-existent everywhere else, and the "idea" -- more precisely, an invention, be it hardware or an algorithm -- can be reimplemented there without compensation to the holder of the patent granted in India. To protect an idea, you would have to patent it in each and every country where you want protection.

Having said all that, I should add that software patents are a bad idea. I believe the Free Software Foundation has a couple of papers about that stand.

abhay said, on September 3, 2008 2:02 PM:

truly relevant information in layman's language. thanks

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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