U.S. Response:

United States Copyright Policy

Protected Material (Computer Associates)

Lacking the copyright notice

United States copyright policy has not yet been clearly established with respect to the concept of "look and feel". While a legal precedent exists, the determination of copyright violation remains a highly subjective and volatile process. Early on, it was claimed that the "structure, sequence, and organization" of a program were protected under copyright law. However, this claim was rejected in 1992's Computer Associates v. Altai in favor of a more specific and up-to-date analysis of the potential violation, which progressively filters out unprotected material from an abstraction of the program's purpose.

The Computer Associates case proposed a means of focusing on protected material in a copyright suit, but it did not clearly state the criteria for protection of user interfaces and environment. These criteria were tested in the cases of Apple v. Microsoft and Lotus v. Borland. The Lotus case is not applicable to the issue of style plagiarism presented here, since the court's decision referred to the behavior of the program rather than the "feel" of it. However, the Apple case certainly applies, as it referred to the actual style of the environment rather than specifying its behavior. In Apple, the court found that the applicable criterion for determining infringement was "virtual identity", rather than "substantial similarity" (as was claimed by Apple). Apple was unable to prove that Microsoft's interface was virtually identical, but the description of the present case implies that virtual identity of "look and feel" does exist. Therefore, it would seem that U.S. law would find copyright violation in the résumé of Student B.

As an aside, the lack of a copyright notice on the résumé of Student A would imply that he had not registered a copyright for it, and certainly not for the "look and feel" of it. Thus, though the copyright was nonetheless present, Student A would have a very difficult time convincing a court of damages arising from its infringement. This would be compounded by the fact that the copyrightable work was of little to no commercial significance. This is not applicable to the honor court in this example, but is nevertheless worth noting, as Student A would likely take it into account when deciding what actions to take beyond the honor court.



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