jmatthew3 - 9:31 pm on Dec 4, 2007 (gmt 0)

I am not a lawyer, but I am a law student studying for an intellectual property final right now. What I'm about to say is NOT legal advice. Do not rely on anything I am about to say.

First, code is protected by copyright. Copyright attaches at the moment of creation. However, in copyright law, especially in computer code, not everything is protected. Generally speaking, ideas are not protected and expression is. (This is called the idea/expression dichotomy and it comes up in lots of situations) In software cases, you have to look at whether what has been implemented is the only way of implementing something (or it's the most efficient way). This is because if there is only one way to implement something, and you implement it that way, we don't give you an absolute right to prevent other people from doing something that way.

The hard part comes when you try to actually tell the difference. Is taking someone's template and placing your own text taking their idea? or is it taking their expression? If all you do is take their way of implementing a css rollover menu, then that's more likely taking of their idea. If you take the general flow of their layout "a couple div tags arranged like so and so to implement a two column liquid layout" then that too (at least to me) looks like taking of an idea.

Taking an entire layout including CSS (best guess) would probably, generally speaking, be over the line. How they arrange things on the screen -- their particular layout -- there is at least some minimal level of original, expressive content in *that* and copying *that* would be protected.