Let’s say your company put a lot of time, effort and expense into creating original software. With your new software application, you gain an advantage in the marketplace. You’re excited about the possibilities for your business.
Unfortunately, soon after your app hits the market, one of your competitors comes out with something suspiciously similar to your company’s work. After you take a closer look, you realize the other company copied your company’s coding.
What can you do?
Software can be protected by copyright
The best legal protection you can have against this kind of action is through copyright law.
Put simply, copyright protects original works of expression. Copyright can protect a wide variety of types of work, including an original story written in a book, an original artwork painted on canvas, a recording of music and more. It surprises some people to learn that copyright can also protect original computer coding.
Originality
Although sometimes people talk about intellectual property this way, copyright law does not actually allow you to prevent anyone else from having the same idea as you. Rather, it protects your original expression of that idea.
For instance, you may have come up with a piece of software that allows users to compare prices for electric vehicles, but that doesn’t mean your competitors can’t also create their own apps that compare prices for electric vehicles. Your copyright protects your expression of that idea, but doesn’t prevent others from making their own expressions of the same general idea.
Likewise, your copyright only protects that part of your expression that is original. If you built your software on top of freeware, you can only claim copyright on the parts of the software that is your original expression.
An increasingly common scenario involves software built using a generative artificial intelligence app such as ChatGPT. The law has not quite caught up to this technology, but presumably the same principle would apply: You could only claim copyright protection in the parts of your code that are original to you.
Infringement
In the example we started with, your competitor didn’t just use the same idea you did, they copied your work. This is an infringement on your rights.
Technically, you had copyright in your original work the moment you put it into code. This means you can take action against your competitor for copying your work without your permission.
However, your rights are much stronger — and your chances of success much greater — if you have registered your copyright. This would give you the right to sue for damages as well as for an injunction to stop your competitor from using your work.