The Changing Roles of Patent and Copyright Protection for Software and Communication Technology in the Internet Age

The roles are changing dramatically for patent and copyright protection as legal mechanisms for protecting software and communication technologies. While copyright protection has traditionally been the primary protection method for software, recent case law in the United States and elsewhere has reduced the scope of protection provided by the copyright laws. At the same time, courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, have increasingly allowed broader patent protection for these technologies. Given that patents protect the useful, functional features of an invention, as opposed to copyrights protecting only the way a work is tangibly and non-functionally expressed, patents are increasingly becoming the legal protection tool of choice for software and communication technology developers. The explosive growth of E-Commence further strengthens the trend to use software patents as business assets and to provide a company with significant leverage and defensive rights.