Copyright Case Reopened
Sun Herald
Saturday May 19, 1990
IMPORTANT computer copyright issues - which most observers had believed settled with changes to the Copyright Act in 1984 - may be about to resurface in Australia, a leading computer industry figure has warned.
The 1984 laws have been seen as a major barrier to software piracy and have also kept cheap clones of the Apple II and Macintosh personal computers off the market.
However Mr David Strong, managing director of Apple Computer Australia, warned last week that the issues were now being reopened.
Mr Strong was speaking at the launch of a major new Australian book on the legal issues of computing.
"Many senior industry people thought the copyright issue was settled when the Copyright Act was changed in 1984 to specifically cover computer programs," he said.
"Now the Copyright Law Review Committee is examining the issue again and furthermore the Autodesk case is being appealed to the Full Bench of the Federal Court."(The Autodesk case involves a dispute between Autodesk, distributors of the best-selling AutoCAD program used by designers and engineers, and computer vendor Martin Peter Dyason.
(Dyason is alleged to have used reverse-engineering techniques to duplicate the effects of a proprietary Autodesk hardware locking circuit - in effect, a copyright protection device - to enable copies of the program to be run on more than one computer at a time.
(While there was no suggestion that he was making illegal copies of the program, Justice Northrup of the Federal Court found his action was a breach of copyright.
(This decision is now being appealed to the Full Bench, in the first real challenge to the amended Copyright Act of 1984. The case has aroused intense interest in the computer industry, both here and overseas.)
Mr Strong said: "It is vital that Australia be at the forefront of fair and equitable laws that allow individuals and companies the opportunity to develop unique products and be compensated adequately for their efforts."
His warning reflects Apple Computer's fierce determination to protect its personal computers from competition from cheap clones. While IBM "compatibles"have flooded the MS-DOS market, no-one has yet been able to build and market a legal Macintosh clone.
David Strong has played a key role in the moves which have kept Mac clones off the market in Australia.
In 1982 he began copyright cases against a company marketing the Wombat, a low-priced Apple II clone. Apple claimed that the company had been using read-only-memory (ROM) chips that embodied reproductions of Apple's proprietary source codes.
The case went all the way to the High Court where, in a decision that stunned many, Apple lost.
The court ruled that, while the source codes were copyright when written on paper, they were not protected in the form of ROM chips and anyone was free to copy them.
The international uproar that followed this decision led swiftly to the 1984 amendments to the Copyright Act, extending protection to ROM chips. The Wombat disappeared from the market and no direct clone has since appeared in this country.
However, Apple's US parent last month took legal action against a Taiwanese company, Akkord, which had been exhibiting a Macintosh clone called the Jonathan at trade shows.
And Apple's legal department is understood to be keeping a watchful eye on a number of peripheral devices, such as the Spectre 128, which allow the rival Atari and Commodore Amiga computers to run Macintosh programs.
The devices are usually sold without the necessary ROM chips. Purchasers are advised to buy new or second-hand Apple ROMs from authorised dealers: a practice Apple frowns on, though it may be powerless to prevent it.
These issues are among many covered in the book Mr Strong was launching, The Legal Environment of Computing (Addison-Wesley), by Sydney computing law specialists Peter Knight and James FitzSimons.
The two are partners in the Sydney-based law firm, Abbott Tout Russell Kennedy, which has set up a computer and technology law section with more than 20 members.
Mr Knight previously worked for Apple Computer as its senior counsel for Asia-Pacific operations.
The book - written on an Apple Macintosh - is being published simultaneously throughout the English-speaking world.
Aimed at both computer professionals and lawyers who want to keep abreast of how the law interacts with changing technologies, it examines issues such as copyright, privacy, data protection, freedom of information, computer hacking and viruses, negligence, contracts and anti-trust matters.
The issues are explained in a non-technical manner, and concrete examples are given wherever possible of the practical application of key points.
The book also gives samples of contracts commonly used in the computer industry. These include software distribution agreements, assignment of copyright, end-user software licences, software development agreements, and computer hardware maintenance agreements.
© 1990 Sun Herald