From ALAN BUNDY
I was delighted that Tam Dalyell devoted so much of his Thistle Diary
to the threat posed to the European software industry by the GATT agreement
(25 April). As he pointed out, computer programs are not a suitable subject
for patent law. Attempts to apply patent law to programs have proved disastrous
in the US.
The other side of this ‘double whammy’ is the attempt to import US-style
copyright law via the European Directive on Software Copyright. The government
must implement this directive in British law by the end of this year. In
doing so it must take great care to exclude the kind of interpretation of
copyright law that is being made in the US. The major worry is the extension
of copyright protection to cover the ‘look and feel’ of computer systems.
There have been a number of US legal cases in which companies have been
sued for marketing a similar looking program, even though the underlying
implementation is completely different. If these cases are successful then
it will set back attempts to introduce common standards into computer software.
It will be as if the Ford Motor Company had been granted copyright on the
layout of controls in their cars, forcing each manufacturer to arrange its
pedals, levers and switches in a different way. This sort of chaos currently
exists in the computing world. We must help to end it by excluding interface
design from software copyright.
Alan Bundy Edinburgh Computing and Social Responsibility Edinburgh
