ACCEPTABLE PROTECTION OF SOFTWARE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - A SURVEY OFSOFTWARE DEVELOPERS AND LAWYERS

The article reports the results of a survey on the optimal legal way t o protect developers' rights to their intellectual property in the US. Two groups were incorporated: software developers and attorneys. The majority of both groups favor copyright as the legal method, but attor neys prefer patenting with a longer protection period. There is no dif ference between the groups with respect to the desired length of copyr ight protection. Majorities in both groups prefer the current period o f 75 years for corporations. By comparing information from 1992 and 19 96, we find that software developers now are more in favor of protecti on of user interfaces. We found little differences between the groups regarding different categories of software. We also found high proport ions of support for protection of source and object codes. Both groups prefer stronger protection for systems than application software. Att orneys, more than developers, favored greater protection for applicati on software than for game software. We expected software developers to favor regulations that would force owners of systems software to offe r their creation to any interested party for equal terms. To our surpr ise, there was significantly more support for this idea among attorney s than among the developers. Majorities in both groups support a speci al law for protection of software intellectual property. (C) 1998 Else vier Science B.V. All rights reserved.