Is There Copyright In A Computer Language?

It's well known that computer programs enjoy copyright protection - many have also been patented, but that's another story and I'm not going to deal with that here. The South African Copyright Act has protected computer programs as a specific category of works since 1992, although prior to that they were protected as 'literary works'. A computer program is defined in the Act as 'a set of instructions fixed or stored in any manner and which, when used directly or indirectly in a computer, directs its operation to bring about a result'. The owner of the copyright in a computer program has the exclusive right to do various things, for example to reproduce, adapt or rent out (licence) the program. There are a few limitations to the copyright owner's rights, for example, a person who is in lawful possession of a computer program (a licensee) can make back-up copies for personal use, provided that the copies are destroyed when the licence ends.

But does this protection extend to a computer language? This issue came up in a UK decision recently, the case of SAS Institute Inc. v World Programming Ltd (2013) EWHC 69 (Ch) and, in the course of the proceedings, a number of legal issues were referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union for advice. The facts were that a company called SAS Institute created a very successful analytical software system which it called SAS, and which was basically an integrated set of programs used for statistical analysis. The main aspect of the system was called Base SAS, but there were further components too. Users of the SAS software were able to write their own apps in SAS language, provided that they took a licence. If an SAS user ever wanted to change to another software supplier it would have to rewrite all its apps in another language, so World Programming saw a market for software to execute SAS-based apps for use elsewhere. World Programming therefore developed a product called World Programming System (WPS) which emulated much of the functionality of the SAS components.

SAS Institute sued WPS for copyright infringement, claiming that WP had infringed copyright, both by creating the WPS product and by producing a user's manual that looked quite similar to the SAS manual. There were quite a few facets to this matter and I'm simply going to concentrate on the most interesting ones. The court upheld the claim that the WPS manual infringed the SAS manual, but the court dismissed the more important claim...