[TUHS] copyright, was History of cal(1)?

[John R Levine via TUHS]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2025, sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au wrote:
>> On 21 Sep 2025, at 11:06, John Levine via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>> So anyway, if AT&T had wanted to use copyright to protect Unix in the 1970s they
>> could have.  I expect they chose trade secret because copyright lawsuits are
>> incredibly expensive and trade secret is a lot easier to enforce, at least if
>> the secrets haven't leaked.
>>
>> R's,
>> John
>
> For those playing along at home, this is a good history.
>
> The AT&T legal department may not have wanted to ‘deposit’ the source code.
>
> Chapter 2: Copyright of Computer Programs
> 	<https://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise17.html>
>
> According to the Copyright Office, the first deposit of a computer program for registration was on November 30, 1961.
> North American Aviation submitted a tape containing a computer program.
> While the Copyright Office was trying to determine whether such a deposit could be registered,
> two short computer programs were submitted by a Columbia University law student to determine how a computer program might be registered.

Right, that was Banzhaf.

He wrote this article "When a Computer Needs a Lawyer" which discusses 
copyright in the last two pages, with footnotes about those programs.

https://insight.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlra/vol71/iss2/6/

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
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