Software Licensing

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and licensing.
Information can qualify to be property in two ways; patent law and copyright laws which are creations of federal statutes, pursuant to Constitutional grant of legislative authority. In order for the government to prosecute the unauthorized copying of computerized information as theft, it must first rely on other theories of information-as-property. Trade secret laws are created by state law, and most jurisdictions have laws that criminalize the violations of a trade-secret holder=s rights in the secret. The definition of a trade secret varies somewhat from state to state, but commonly have the same elements. For example, AThe information must be secret, Anot of public knowledge or of general knowledge in the trade or business, a court will allow a trade secret to be used by someone who discovered or developed the trade secret independently or if the holder does not take adequate precautions to protect the secret.
In 1964 the United States Copyright Office began ...

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explicitly include computer programs. Title 17 to the United States Code states that it is illegal to make or to distribute copies of copyrighted material without authorization, except for the user=s right to make a single backup copy for archival purposes. Any written material (including computer programs) fixed in a tangible form (written somewhere i.e. printout) is considered copyrighted without any additional action on the part of the author. Therefore, it is not necessary that a copy of the software program be deposited with the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. for the program to be protected as copyrighted. With that in mind then a copyright is a property right only. In order ...

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