Re: gEDA-user: gEDA vs commercial product

[Harry Eaton <haceaton@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Does anyone care to comment / speculate how much a
> standard can cover by
> Copyright? Whether symbols looking similar (or the
> same, even) are in
> breach of Copyright? If one symbol on its own isn't,
> is there some
> "literary work" in the database (ie. the list of
> symbols). It would be
> very difficult to reproduce a library of symbols
> without copying or
> referring to that.

The scenes a faire doctrine should allow a free
implementation of something similar. However given
that the IEC is litigous, it would probably mean a
court fight including an appeal. I would expect to win
in the  end provided the symbols just looked really
similar and weren't actually coppied, but who wants to
pay for the fight.

See http://www.ivanhoffman.com/scenes.html for more
info on the doctrine.



 
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