Re: Copyrighting schemas, Hailstorm

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 01 Jun 2001 15:54:13 +0100, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
> Shirky's worry doesn't fit with my understanding of copyright.  A
> copyright is not a patent.  A work must clearly be derived _in its
> expression_, not its substance, from the original, to be an infringing
> derivative.  Otherwise for example no songs about, well, almost
> anything, would be publishable.

I guess my concern is whether the courts would interpret it that way, or
whether they would find that a compatible but not-created-by-Microsoft
schema was a derived work.  I can see that going either way, and with
current trends in copyright, I don't feel much certainty.