If that was true, then you could sue any company that has similar code. But as far as I know, this never happened in the history of copyright and code. Source code is not treated the same as the likeness of characters.
Both Whelan v. Jaslow (3d Cir. 1986) and Whelan v. Jaslow (3d Cir. 1986) are cases of this. The most obvious reason its not more common is because discoverabilty is much rarer.
It’s not like my source code is going to be released to box office numbers and increasingly more code is opensource to avoid the hassle of IP in a sort of public contract that it remain opensource (as defined and regulated enforced by its copyright license!).
If that was true, then you could sue any company that has similar code. But as far as I know, this never happened in the history of copyright and code. Source code is not treated the same as the likeness of characters.
Both Whelan v. Jaslow (3d Cir. 1986) and Whelan v. Jaslow (3d Cir. 1986) are cases of this. The most obvious reason its not more common is because discoverabilty is much rarer.
It’s not like my source code is going to be released to box office numbers and increasingly more code is opensource to avoid the hassle of IP in a sort of public contract that it remain opensource (as defined and regulated enforced by its copyright license!).