Discussion:
I was going to enter into business with a few others, but I have decided to go it alone. It was my idea and is documented in a statement of intellectual property that I had noterized. The others want to continue using my idea and form a company, but I am forming my own company using the same idea.
Do I have any right to stop them or negotiate a percentage?
Thanks
Answer:
I am not an attorney, and an attorney is better qualified
to answer your question.
In reply to a question posted on this web site by member
SUSIEQ, dated 09/05/2001, senior member I AM ALWAYS LIABLE
provided a two part discussion of copyrights in general. The
following is a quote from his discussion:
"No protection for ideas
In no case does copyright protection extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied. [17 USC §102(b)] Copyright protection extends only to the expression of an idea or theme, not to the idea or theme itself. [Midas Productions, Inc. v Baer (1977, CD Cal) 437 F Supp 1388; see also Allen v. Academic Games League of Am. (1996, CA9 Cal) 89 F.3d 614]] "
Citizen Brown