Date   : Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:28:08 +0100
From   : darren.grant@... (Darren Grant)
Subject: Copyright on BBC Software

Officially yes there is copyright as the software is only 30 years old.
However the fileserver software would have originally shipped with the
fileserver hardware so you are entitled to use the software with it, in the
same way you are allowed to use MOS and the welcome pack etc with a BBC as
it came with it.

Where the problem occurs is that it is not clear who if anyone owns any
copyright on the additional Acorn software that would have been purchased
separately. The trouble is that I doubt anyone could lay claim to the
copyright now as the Acorn company no longer exists and it would appear that
the only thing that still exists is the Trademark and The copyrights to the
later RISC materials.

What happens to the copyright really depends on what the relationship is to
the designers of the software. In some cases Acorn would have just been a
publisher on behalf of the author and therefore the copyright remains the
property of the author. If however the author was an employee of Acorn and
produced it as part of their job at Acorn then the copyright is effectively
lost as it wasn?t sold or transferred to anyone else when Acorn shut down.
To claim copyright someone would have to produce a document that shows that
Acorn transferred the copyright to them.

What you have to remember is that a company is a legal entity, much like a
person. Acorn is effectively a dead person that had no family to pass on
their belongings to. Just before they died they sold their name and the
intellectual property to the ARM RISC processor, the RiscOS and Archimedes
architecture. I?m not sure if they sold the BBC Micro related stuff but if
they did it has surely been abandoned during the process of splitting up and
reselling that has happened to the companies assets over the years.

Darren



On 28/9/07 08:09, "Chris Priest" <chris.priest@...> wrote:

> Hi All,
>  
> Now I have the Acorn fileserver setup and running at the charity for the
> interactive IT museum, the question has been raised as to the legality of the
> software I have preloaded.
>  
> Does anyone have an idea on if copyrights still exist for things such as the
> L3 file server?
>  
> I have loaded a few games from Acornsoft as well, snapper, super space
> invaders etc..
>  
> Is there perhaps a document located somewhere that I might nab and print to
> appease their fears?
>  
> Best Regards
> Chris
>  
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> bbc-micro mailing list
> bbc-micro@...
> http://lists.cloud9.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/bbc-micro