This chapter examines legislative responses to claims to copyright computer software products. It first considers the extent of the legal controls sought over software innovation and its subsequent uses, noting the economic stakes in the policy ultimately adopted towards appropriation. It then looks at the formation of the Australian legislative response in 1984, and goes on to note the subsequent international developments which have become part of the context for any further national legal responses.

A POLICY OF APPROPRIATION?

This section begins by recognizing the stresses which come with the move of copyright into the industrial world. It identifies the various interests with an economic stake in the outcome of the property question, then examines the kinds of controls which are sought over the technology. These are controls not only over direct or literal copying but also over derivative development work by potential competitors. Here the significance of the idea/expression distinction is explored and the issue of licensing raised. The section notes the alternation between expansive and restrictive views of copyright protection, especially in the decisions of the courts which interpret the legislative enactments.

Moving copyright into the industrial area of software has tested the limits of appropriability. Conventionally, copyright is said to provide protection only for the original form of expression of a literary or other artistic work, however the nature of software makes it difficult to distinguish its form of expression from the underlying ideas, concepts and techniques on which the work is constructed (Allen et al., 1972). Whether the traditional distinction is workable is important to the future of innovation in the software production industry.