Supreme Court Ruling Encourages Early Filing of Applications to Register Copyrights [Patent Reviews]

Many electronics inventions have associated software that adds considerable value to the invention. Efforts to patent software often encounter difficulties because the rules in the patent field deny protection for abstract ideas. So, many software creators rely on copyright for a significant form of protection against copying. Indeed, the copyright of original software is almost always available, even when patents are not. Copyrights are particularly useful against exact copies, such as counterfeit software.