Copyright And Patent Protection For Computer Software: How Has The Landscape Changed?

It has been established for more than two decades that both patent and copyright laws in the United States provide intellectual property protections for computer software—with the former generally thought to protect the inventive idea or procedure encompassed in the software, and the latter protecting the expression of that idea through a computer program. However, as the prominence of computer software has continued to grow, the scope of patent law software protections—and the corresponding focus on copyright law protections as an alternative measure—appear to have shifted under recent Supreme Court and Federal Circuit precedent.

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