‘Equitable Intellectual Property Protection of Computer Programs in South Africa: Some Proposals for Reform’
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2012
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Stellenbosch Law Review
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Juta
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
This paper provides a brief overview of the copyright, patent and trade secret protection of computer programs in South Africa and then sets out suggestions for how this protection could be altered or better implemented to create a more equitable balance between creators’ and users’ rights. The overview of intellectual property (“IP”) protection of computer programs is brief as there is already a substantive body of South African specific literature that discusses it extensively. This paper’s main focus is the evaluation of the equity of the protection and making reform proposals. A computer program is a series of instructions which enable a computer to perform a task or achieve a result.3 Computer programs are created in human-readable source code which is then compiled or translated into machine-readable object code. In copyright parlance, object code is “merely an adaptation of source code”.
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Reference:
Ncube, C. B. (2012). Equitable Intellectual Property Protection of Computer Programs in South Africa: Some Proposals for Reform. Stellenbosch Law Review, 23, 438-461.