Best way to protect my new commercial software.

[Robert Kern]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:54:26 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
>> On 2007-12-18, Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au>
>> wrote:
>>> On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:04:29 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2007-12-18, Jan Claeys <usenet at janc.be> wrote:
>>>>> Op Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:54:35 +0000, schreef Grant Edwards:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Uh what?  I don't know what country you're in, but in the US, it
>>>>>> doesn't take any time at all to copyright something.  The mere act
>>>>>> of writing something copyrights it.  I thought it was the same in
>>>>>> Europe as well.
>>>>> No, it's only copyrighted when you _publish_ it.
>>>> Interesting.  So, in Europe, if somebody steals something you wrote
>>>> before you get it published, they're free to do with it as they
>>>> please?
>>> Please do not conflate theft and copyright infringement, or theft and
>>> plagiarism.
>> I wasn't.  If I write something down and somebody steals that paper,
>> that's theft.
> 
> In which case copyright isn't going to protect you -- especially if you 
> were relying on automatic copyright and haven't registered it.

<off_topic_armchair_lawyering_though_ianal>
Well, you can get injunctive relief without registering the copyright. Copyright
doesn't protect one from physical theft, but it does grant some protection
against the things the thief might do with the stolen goods.

For example, suppose someone steals my laptop with all of my code on it. They
could take my unpublished code and slap it on SourceForge. Provided that I could
prove authorship, I could get a court order for the thief to remove that code. I
don't need to prove that he stole my laptop in order to do that. Actually, now
that I think about it, I could issue a DMCA takedown notice, and I wouldn't need
to prove anything at all unless if the notice gets challenged; then the burden
of proof is on them.
</off_topic_armchair_lawyering_though_ianal>

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco