Articles

• Windich, Max / De Silva, Sam, Protection of Software Functionality, Programming Languages and Data File Formats after , Spotting a trend towards narrowing the scope of copyright protection for software, CRI 2013, 129-135
  In January of this year, the High Court of England and Wales issued its judgment in the case of SAS Institute Inc v. World Programming Ltd, following the ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) addressing the scope of copyright protection available to the functionality, programming language and data file formats of SAS’s proprietary software under European law.This article will first review the legal background to the CJEU’s decision. In doing so the authors will review some of the underlying policy considerations which have informed the relevant legislation and examine the progress of the pan-European harmonisation of copyright protection for software (I.). The article then analyses the CJEU’s decision, in particular by: (a) highlighting those areas of uncertainty which remain and which may be the subject of further referrals in the future and (II.); (b) contrasting the European decision with that reached in the Oracle v. Google case brought in Northern California (III.). The article argues that rather than representing a significant development in law, the SAS case serves to reinforce an existing cross-jurisdictional legal trend towards narrowing the scope of copyright protection for software.This article will conclude with comments highlighting practical and commercial approaches which software copyright owners may take in order to maximise their protection against loss of business to software which replicates their software’s functionality or look and feel without replicating its source code (referred to as “cloneware") (IV.).

• Gercke, Marco, Cybersecurity Strategy, Why it is necessary to move from Cybersecurity philosophies to true Cybersecurity strategies, CRI 2013, 136-142
  Cybersecurity is a global concern and incidents affect governments, businesses and individuals globally. Topics such as Prism and Tempora not only dominate public debate for weeks but also lead to significant activities in the field of enhancing Cybersecurity. The discussion about interception of communications and access to information stored abroad certainly motivated a significant number of governments and companies that had not yet established a Cybersecurity strategy to develop and implement such an instrument. The article offers a brief introduction into the role of Cybersecurity strategy and its relationship to preventing criminal activities (I.), before analyzing focus, advantages and disadvantages of existing Cybersecurity strategies (II.). Then, the article elaborates a general structure of a comprehensive Cybersecurity strategy and the essential stages for its development and maintenance (III.).

• CRI 2013, 142-147
• CRI 2013, 147-150
• CRI 2013, 150-153
• CRI 2013, 153-156
• CRI 2013, 156-158

Updates

• Lloyd, Ian, UK: The Defamation Act 2013, CRI 2013, 158-160

About the Authors

• About the Authors, CRI 2013, 160