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

[John Robertson]

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.

John :-#)#

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