From walt@swcp.com Tue Feb 7 05:52:17 1995 Received: from kitsune.swcp.com by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA05193 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Tue, 7 Feb 1995 20:50:05 +0100 Received: (from walt@localhost) by kitsune.swcp.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) id MAA15527 for SC22WG5@dkuug.dk; Tue, 7 Feb 1995 12:52:17 -0700 Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 12:52:17 -0700 From: Walt Brainerd Message-Id: <199502071952.MAA15527@kitsune.swcp.com> To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: ISO, ... X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Walt: | >standard) cannot be copyrighted later, even if the form and | >format are changed somewhat. Keith: | See the Berne Convention. Your lawyer was clearly sticking to US laws | only. Berne superseded US law when the US signed the treaty. "My" copy | was borrowed from Sun Legal when they had offices nearby. That was a | few years back. However, any good legal library (and even a bad local | library) probably has the "readers digest" version in one of the | standard legal compendiums). Indeed, my information was obtained some time ago. But do the "copyright" (or lack thereof) rules from pre-1989 apply or the current ones? The current standard is much the same as the drafts circulated before 1989. | So, working from memory, in a nutshell, copyright is inherent in a | document. An author need take no specific action for the document to | be copyrighted. This raises another interesting point: who is the author of the Fortran standard? Sun, IBM, Unicomp, and some others? ISO? ANSI? CBEMA? How can ISO and ANSI both claim they have the copyright on the standard? We have discussed this and it perhaps involves complications such as who is paying for it all and who is working for whom. My only point is that maybe some of these things should be investigated by those lawyers who know more about it than we do, if we really feel it is important to change how things are done. This might be a suitable role for the ACM. Walt Brainerd walt@fortran.com Unicomp, Inc. +1-505-275-0800 856-1501 (fax) 1874 San Bernardino Ave NE +1-500-Fortran (367-8726) Albuquerque, NM 87122 USA http://www.fortran.com/fortran