[asterisk-dev] Asterisk Appliance?

[Steve Kennedy]

On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 12:01:48PM -0500, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:

> ----- Steve Underwood <steveu at coppice.org> wrote:
> > I think the schematic itself has copyright, like any other document.
> > Its 
> > the circuit which the schematic describes which has no copyright 
> > protection. This is like not being able to xerox a page from an atlas,
> > but sketching the map it contains is OK. For practical purposes, this
> > means much the same thing as there being no copyright on the
> > schematic. 
> > However, I think its important to get these details right, or they
> > seem 
> > confusing. Why would this document itself not be protected, while all
> > others are?
> I (not being a lawyer either) believe you are correct; the same applies to PC board layouts. The layout itself is a copyrightable work, but the circuit description it embodies is not. As Robin already stated, ideas cannot be copyrighted, only the expression of the idea can be copyrighted.

Think of the Sparc V CPU (I think it's the V), Sun open sourced it's
design - well they actually open sourced the layout code (Verilog or
some other chip design package). Whether that's actually any use to
anybody is another matter.


Steve

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