English High Court Applies European Software Ruling In SAS v WPL

SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd [2013] EWHC 69 (Ch)

The English High Court has dismissed a number of claims of copyright infringement brought by SAS Institute Inc against a rival developer (SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd). Software proprietors and developers have followed the case closely through the English courts and all the way to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), since SAS's claim raised important questions about which elements of a computer program are protected by copyright, and which are not.

In a judgment on 25 January 2012, the High Court applied the CJEU ruling to SAS's claim and confirmed that copyright in a computer program:

Does not protect the functionality of the computer program from being copied Does not prevent others from using the same programming language Does not protect data file formats (interfaces) Background

SAS owns the copyright in a software environment called Base SAS. SAS customers can use Base SAS to write and run applications in "SAS Language".

World Programming Limited ("WPL") developed a rival system - the World Programming System ("WPS") - that was capable of executing SAS applications. WPS emulated the functionality of the SAS system, producing the same outputs from the same inputs as the SAS system.

In developing WPS, WPL's developers did not have access to SAS source code. Instead, they studied and observed a "Learning Edition" of the SAS system. They also referred closely to SAS manuals, effectively using the manuals as a functional specification for WPS.

SAS claimed that WPL had infringed SAS copyright by:

Copying the SAS manuals into WPL's manuals (this was the only part of SAS's claim that the High Court upheld) Copying a substantial part of the functionality of the SAS system Copying SAS manuals into the source code of WPL's competing system Indirectly copying SAS's Learning Edition. Functionality

The High Court's confirmation that copyright does not extend to the functionality of a computer program is welcome. The functionality of a computer program is essentially an "idea", and the law of copyright does not protect ideas; only the way in which ideas are expressed. Had the English courts extended copyright protection to functionality, this would have have had a serious impact on the development practices across the software industry, potentially stifling innovation and competition.

Studying a program to understand its functionality

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