I am looking at some software that is copyrighted (e.g. ABC company 2010). As most software comes with a use or license agreement, this piece does not (I could not even find a "release from liability" statement e.g. if the software crashed your system and destroyed all your data).
Presumably it was created for a State government office, which has rather narrow jurisdiction in a particular field (e.g. they can regulate certain types of entities in a field but not all types), and released to the public. The software is designed to produce documentation for only the entities that are under regulatory control of the government office.
The software end-user is tasked with filling in a bunch of form fields; they can import contact lists from MS Outlook or type them in, place maps retrieved from Google maps, etc.
The product is a very large MS Word document (say about 50 pages). Essentially it appears to be based on a template, all the user info is filled in and nicely formatted. But many of the output pages seem to be NOT designed by the software company - basic information pages.
Say you left all fields blank and just asked the software to produce the document. In essence this is producing a template. Is this document copyrighted? I see how the code that produces the document is copyrighted, but don't see how its output could be. I don't see any copyright notice on the produced document.
Moving along with those ideas/assumptions. If I were to create a similar software program that provided similar output, but my software application was for "all entities in the field", not just those specified in the copyrighted software, can I do this without any copyright issues. I am not reverse-engineering the code, not even looking at it. I am saying, hey I can do this better, and make it applicable to a much wider audience. Is that my output may appear similar to the output mentioned an issue? If I directly use some of the "basic information pages" as part of my output, is this an issue?
I would like to either sell my program or charge access to use it. Any legal problems here?
Presumably it was created for a State government office, which has rather narrow jurisdiction in a particular field (e.g. they can regulate certain types of entities in a field but not all types), and released to the public. The software is designed to produce documentation for only the entities that are under regulatory control of the government office.
The software end-user is tasked with filling in a bunch of form fields; they can import contact lists from MS Outlook or type them in, place maps retrieved from Google maps, etc.
The product is a very large MS Word document (say about 50 pages). Essentially it appears to be based on a template, all the user info is filled in and nicely formatted. But many of the output pages seem to be NOT designed by the software company - basic information pages.
Say you left all fields blank and just asked the software to produce the document. In essence this is producing a template. Is this document copyrighted? I see how the code that produces the document is copyrighted, but don't see how its output could be. I don't see any copyright notice on the produced document.
Moving along with those ideas/assumptions. If I were to create a similar software program that provided similar output, but my software application was for "all entities in the field", not just those specified in the copyrighted software, can I do this without any copyright issues. I am not reverse-engineering the code, not even looking at it. I am saying, hey I can do this better, and make it applicable to a much wider audience. Is that my output may appear similar to the output mentioned an issue? If I directly use some of the "basic information pages" as part of my output, is this an issue?
I would like to either sell my program or charge access to use it. Any legal problems here?
