Patents traditionally protect industrial processes, as well as machines and new materials, by giving inventors the authority to say who may run the process in industrial contexts.
Copyrights traditionally protect documents written on paper by giving authors the right to say who may make copies of the documents.
Computer software can both be read as a document and used to run industrial processes, and it is not clear which form is appropriate. In the past, courts have generally been hostile to attempts to patent software, and the preferred form of software protection is copyrights. Because software cannot be used to run a process without making a copy of it, copyright licenses are used by the software industry to determine who may run a process with the software.
Software patents began in the 1980s. A few software patents have been granted, and this continues to create controversy. Copyrights are easy and inexpensive to obtain. An application could cost a mere $30. Patents, on the other hand, are expensive and require demonstration of the innovativeness of the new invention. Copyrights only protect the manner in which the algorithm is written, allowing a competitor to get around a programmer’s copyright by independently rewriting the algorithm. The major advantage of patents is that they protect the very algorithm, regardless of how it is written. Copyright law will not prevent the creation of a competitor program that utilizes the same ideas of an existing program. The independent creation is irrelevant to patent infringement. Even if someone is not aware of a patent, there can still be infringement against the patent.
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