Re: Question About GNU General Public License

[Alexander Terekhov]

Isaac wrote:
[...]
> Cases like Sega and Connectix which I believe have been mentioned already in
> this thread support the argument that linking to a library does not
> necessarily create a derivative work based on the library.
> 
> Cases like the Teddy Ruxpin case involving third party tapes for a
> talking moving bear and Duke Nukem involving third party game levels
> for a video game support the opposite contention.  In those case the
> court found that the third party infringed despite the fact that
> none of the original work appeared in the derivative works.

Do you have access to 

"Christian H. Nadan, Note, A Proposal to Recognize Component 
 Works:  How a Teddy Bears on the Competing Ends of Copyright 
 Law, 78 Cal.L.Rev."   

?

It's cited in

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs4984/computerlaw/lewis.doc
("LEWIS GALOOB TOYS, INC. v. NINTENDO OF AMERICA, INC.")

<quote>

Some time ago, for example, computer companies began marketing 
spell-checkers that operate within existing word processors by 
signalling the writer when a word is misspelled.   These 
applications, as well as countless others, could not be produced 
and marketed if courts were to conclude that the word processor 
and spell-checker combination is a derivative work based on the 
word processor alone.   The Game Genie is useless by itself, it 
can only enhance, and cannot duplicate or recaste, a Nintendo 
game[... "output" ...] nor does it supplant demand for Nintendo 
game cartridges.   Such innovations rarely will constitute 
infringing derivative works under the Copyright Act.   See 
generally Nadan, supra, at 1667-72.

</quote>

It's probably the same "Christian H. Nadan" who wrote the 
devastating "legal review" of the idiotic FSF's interpetation 
of the GPL.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=40EE8CDC.977AE902%40web.de

regards,
alexander.