Although I would not consider myself an expert on this topic, I would like to explain this from my point of view. All of U2logic's software did have what is called an unpublished copyright right. This means we have not spent the money or time to get a copyright on our software from United States Copyright Office:
"Copyright is a form of protection provided by U.S. law to authors of “original works of authorship.” When a work is published under the authority of the copyright owner (see definition of “publication” below), a notice of copyright may be placed on all publicly distributed copies or phonorecords. The use of the notice is the responsibility of the copyright owner and does not require permission from, or registration with, the Copyright Office."
Over the last 20 plus years we have sent out UniBasic source to our customers thinking we were protected. No so much.
One of our clients, or should I say former client, told us they no longer wanted our software and were not using it even though it was embedded in their operational software. I believed them.
Some years later they stopped support on our last product they had licensed with us. They said they were going to SB/XA. Besides my confusion from going from U2logic's Web based products to SB/XA which is web based, I thought this was very suspicious. I went to their facility for a conversation with one of their programmers and noticed they were still using the software we had licensed to them many years ago.
Our former client said they owned the software since it was embedded. U2logic hired lawyers to protect these U2logic's assets. Many years later and hundreds of thousands of dollars, U2logic prevailed in court. See internet references using "U2logic, Incorporated v. American Auto Shield, LLC".
All of U2logic's code is covered with copyright issued from the United States Copyright Office. Any new code written will be copyrighted as well.
No blogs were published while this lawsuit was active as to not give the other side any ammunition or insight to their adversary. From today forward please keep watching as the backlog of ideas come streaming forth.
