Computer Associates International v. Altai, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
982 F.2d 693 (2d Cir. 1992)
Relevant factsFree
Computer Associates (CA) (plaintiff) created a program component, ADAPTER, allowing its scheduling software to run across multiple operating systems; a former CA employee, hired by competitor Altai (defendant), created a similar component, OSCAR 3.4, that copied roughly 30% of ADAPTER's code. After CA sued for copyright infringement, Altai rewrote the component from scratch as OSCAR 3.5, without input from anyone familiar with ADAPTER; the district court found OSCAR 3.4 infringing but OSCAR 3.5 non-infringing, and CA appealed only the OSCAR 3.5 ruling.
IssueFree
Whether copyright protection extends beyond a work's literal components to its non-literal components.
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