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.
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  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