"Bounce buffer" copyright [was Re: flash (or ide) storage for unibus 11?]

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-12-01 16:49, John Robertson wrote:
> On 11/28/2015 3:41 PM, Mouse wrote:
>>>> Love that term, "bounce buffer" (I wrote a whole package to support
>>>> them in a packet switch I did) - I'm officially adopting it, right
>>>> now! :-)
>>> Hey - anything that anyone writes is automatically copyrighted.
>> I realize you...may have been less than entirely serious.  But what you
>> wrote could easily be taken seriously, especially by someone only
>> partially inside our culture.  So I'm going to be a minor killjoy here.
>>
>> Yes, anything written now is automatically copyrighted in most
>> jursidctions.  But (a) the term "bounce buffer" is small enough and
>> obvious enough it probably cannot be copyrighted on its own (and is not
>> infringing when copied in isolation), (b) was quite possibly published
>> without copyright claim before automatic copyright and is thus in the
>> public domain now, and (c) is of uncertain authorship anyway.  So...
>>
>>> So first you need permission to use that!
>> ...you actually don't.
>>
>> /~\ The ASCII                  Mouse
>> \ / Ribbon Campaign
>>   X  Against HTML        mouse at rodents-montreal.org
>> / \ Email!         7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
>>
> Further to this discussion on 'automatic' copyright. That only came into
> being in 1989 - prior to that ALL documents had to have either the
> symbol (c) or the word COPYRIGHT as well as the name of the person or
> organization on the document (if a single page) or the front page or the
> index page. This was true for the period prior to 1978, however during
> the period 1978 through 1989 you had up to five years to copyright the
> document, otherwise it passed into public domain.
>
> https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
>
> One could trademark an expression 'bounce buffer', however as Mouse
> points out you can't exactly copyright it.

And all of these commands are only relevant if you are in the US. Much 
of the rest of the world signed the Berne convention long before that.

	Johnny