Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
dhbailey wrote:
But page layout has not been copyrightable under U.S. copyright law,
so it would remain for a copyright judge to make a decision as to
whether a Finale file is original creative content
I think the findings in Adobe v. SSI would apply here: the data that
constituted the glyphs in a typeface were found to be copyrightable as
"computer programs", even though the output they created were not.
But there are no unique data to create the "glyphs" in a finale
document. It is more a compilation of a sort of "1 from font A and 3
from Font B and 4 from custom lines" compilation of disparate items into
a single file. A typeface file which is what the Adobe case was about
is all that is needed to create that typeface onscreen. In other words,
all the data are in that file and rely on no other files for their display.
Finale files on the other hand are reliant on those copyrighted typeface
files to create the display so I'm not sure that the case you cite would
be applicable here.
If it were, then any Word file would be copyrightable by the person who
made it, be it the secretary typing a letter for his boss or a person
cutting-and-pasting from another document. And I have never heard that
Word data files (myfile.doc) as being copyrightable apart from the
copyrightability of the content those data files display when opened in
Word or another wordprocessor which can import Word files. If that has
been upheld, a copyright in a .DOC file which is separate from the
copyright in the underlying document that the .doc file contains, it
would be a precedent, certainly.
But I don't think the typeface files and the Finale files are in the
same category.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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