Donald says:
>The Berne Convention makes no reference to either "adaptation" or
>"derivative work" that I can find. There is a reference to
>"alterations" which is undefined but only states that they "...shall
>be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in
>the original work."
Check out Article 12 of the Berne Convention: "Authors of literary or
artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing adaptations,
arrangements and other alterations of their works."
Donald - I don't know whose advising you about your own law, but I'd hire
someone else. I ran a quick email by a UK barrister who helped me enforce in
the UK courts a trade secrets judgment that I obtained on behalf of Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts (KKR) in a Washington state court (which btw is likely how
Issaries would likely enforce its intellectual property rights - sue in
California and then get the judgment enforced overseas). His response is
that in most respects UK Copyright law and US Copyright law are very
similar. Main differences are in the work for hire doctrine and moral rights
of (authorized) authors - neither of which are relevant to the points you
raise.
Now given that I have a lot of respect for attorneys that have obtained
judgments (or at least helped me enforce judgments I obtained over here),
and little for the interpretations of legal doctrine given by non-lawyers
such as journalists, talk show pundits, and, in this case, software
programmers and/or developers, I think this legal flame war ought to end. No
disrespect is intended - just as I know very little about designing
programming and supporting computer systems, I hesitate to put much faith in
a non-lawyer's interpretation of the law - especially when lawyers I've
worked with before strongly disagree.
Jeff
End of Glorantha Digest, Vol 11, Issue 134