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 The 21st century truly is the "high tech age." As a consequence, computers and technology law is of crucial importance. In point of fact there are an ever growing amount of issues relating to computers and technology law only at that juncture in history. With that in your mind, this breakdown of computers and technology law is presented startup legal services.

Among the more active areas in regard to computers and technology law involves issues stemming from copyright. In regards to computers, the Internet and technology law, copyright issues have become very commonplace. Protecting copyright interests with the growth of the Internet is now particularly problematic. In point of fact, with the growth of the Internet, and with the increasing incidence and complexity of copyright issues associated with the Net, there's an entire new legal specialty including attorneys that focus their practices on these issues.

Copyright issues extend beyond the Internet as well to the arena of software and hardware development as well. In regards to computers and technology law, the protection of intellectual property associated with software and hardware is incredibly important. Yet again, this really is a place which has given rise to an entire new legal specialty consisting of attorneys who are focusing their energy and efforts on protection the intellectual property interests of these men, women and companies mixed up in design and development of software applications and computer related hardware.

Needless to say, a few of the most crucial developments that have occurred in regard to computers and technology law are related to music and the downloading of music from the Internet and World Wide Web. Through both litigation in courts and statutes and regulations that have gone into effect, there remains a great deal of activity in the arena of protecting the copyright interest of individuals mixed up in music industry on different levels.

Although it has not become as prevalent as many industry analysts predicted, there has been a slow however fairly steady increase in the amount of people who are using ebooks at today's point in time. (Many experts predicted about five years ago that there would have been a significant amount of people using and reading ebooks by this aspect in time. While this significant increase which was contemplated before has not occurred, how many eBook users is higher than it had been five years ago.)

With the increase in eBook usage -again, which can be expected to expand at the very least to some extent next several years - there has been a growing concern associated with protecting the copyright interest of authors who are finding their work in eBook form. On several levels, it is a harder task to guard written materials that are contained in ebooks that is the case with traditional, "brick and mortar world" publications. Therefore, in regard to computers and technology law, there's a growing interest amongst attorneys in developing far better avenues by which the information of ebooks could be protected in this high tech age.

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The Court of Appeal in case of Nova Productions Ltd v Mazooma Games Ltd; Nova Productions Ltd v Bell Fruit Games Ltd [2007] has ruled that producing a computer program which emulates another program, without actually copying that program's code or graphics, does not breach copyright laws. The case is likely to be of immense interest (and of potential concern) to software developers along with the owners of copyright in computer programs.

Commentators believe that the goal of the case is to act as a memory it is not, and shouldn't, be an infringement of copyright simply to utilize ideas that are expressed in a copyright work. Lord Justice Jacob's conclusion that this could turn copyright into an instrument of oppression, rather than way of encouraging creativity, is usually to be quite definitely welcomed.

The claimant, Nova Productions, had created a pool-based computer game called 'Pocket Money' ;.Nova alleged that Mazooma Games and Bell Fruit Games - both were also games producers - had come up with virtually identical pool games, 'Jackpot Pool' and 'Trick Shot' ;.Both games contained ideas and functionality just like those in 'Pocket Money' ;.Nova didn't suggest that either of the defendants had directly copied the application code of 'Pocket Money' ;.The High Court accepted that some elements of the games may have been "inspired by" Nova, and so held there was no copyright infringement.

Nova appealed on the lands that the animation sequences found in 'Pocket Money' amounted to "artistic works" and there would therefore be copyright in the sequence of frames. It was also alleged that one other similar options that come with the game were "literary works", also protected by copyright. The claim to artistic copyright was according of the visual appearance of 'Pocket Money', whereas the claim to literary copyright was according of the application code and preparatory design material for the software.

The Court of Appeal held that copyright mustn't be properly used to stifle the creation of individual works which are in fact very different. But along with its general importance in affirming the scope of copyright protection, your choice is specially important with regards to two specific points covered in the appeal:

§ Whether in assessing the artistic quality of a drawing that forms part of a series of stills, such as in an animation, the differences between the stills can be studied into account as part of the graphical quality. The court held that a series of drawings is just a series of graphic works, and that by assembling a series of still images one more copyright work or protection above and beyond the still images isn't created.

§ The Court of Appeal has affirmed the principle established in Navitaire v Easyjet, that there surely is no infringement of copyright in a pc code centered on similarities in the visual outputs from this code. In determining whether literary copyright in a pc code has been infringed it's to be centered on careful analysis of whether the code itself has been copied, rather than an analysis of whether there's any visual similarity in the outputs of this program.

© RT COOPERS, 2007. This Briefing Note does not provide an extensive or complete statement of regulations relating to the issues discussed nor does it constitute legal advice. It is supposed only to highlight general issues. Specialist legal advice should continually be sought with regards to particular circumstances.

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