understanding of copyright law?
be obvious) you CANNOT simply make any change to someone else’s work and call it your own. That would be a derivative work and–unless you obtained permission from the copyright owner–would be a case of copyright infringement. In the United States, the creator of a work (e.g. a computer program) is assumed to have copyright rights to a work–even if the work is not formally copyrighted and had a copy place in the Library of Congress. This sort of ‘help’ from the willfully ignorant is why the Internet is a curse as well as a blessing. When in doubt: please keep your mouth shut. See http://www.copyright.gov/ for the FACTS. See also http://www.uspto.gov/ to dispell myths regarding trademarks, registered trademarks, and patents (no, regardless of what people of Oba’s ilk might say, they’re not the same thing). – Patents & trade secrets protect ideas. – Trademarks protect names. – Copyrights protect works.
