Research On The Protection Mode Of Computer Software Copyright

In 21st century, the issue on protection of intellectual property of computer software has become increasingly noticeable, with knowledge-based economy and information industry developing. Because the software itself is "cumulative technological innovation," and the outcome of the "functional work", its unique features make the traditional intellectual property law difficult to provide accurate and comprehensive protection. At present, the copyrights law is a prevailing mode to protect software, but there are many serious problems. Patent, trade secret and other laws could work from another angle but still inefficiently. The software always lies in the marginal area of "weak protection". This article analyses unique characteristics of software, expounds all kinds of problems in software’s traditional copyrights protection mode, and leads to theoretical exploration of the industries copyrights protection for software; moreover, the article aims to combine software protection legislation in representative foreign countries, makes it clear that industrial copyrights protection mode is the future direction of software protection, and finally moves back to current legal system of software copyrights protection in China, tries to improve our legal system on computer software copyrights protection with industrial copyrights protection mode basing on the present.This thesis is divided into three parts as followed.The first part is to "raise the issue and analyses theoretically".(Chapterl,2,3) It is an introduction of the subject, such as definition of software, an analysis of its characteristics, clarifying theory of software copyrights protection. In addition, this section focuses on the malpractice of traditional copyrights protection of software, leads to the theory of industry copyrights protection of software, explains concept and nature of the industries copyrights, and finally reveals rationality and significance of software industry copyrights protection mode.The second part is the "legislative analysis and institutional investigation". (Chapter4,5) This section introduces realistic overview and historical development of the software copyrights legislation in some representative countries first, explains the history reasons of formation of software copyrights protection and difficulties of the specific legislation reform, and then introduces legislation practice of the software industry copyrights protection mode in some countries, reveals the direction of future development of software protection, and finally returns to China’s legal system, sorts out origin and development of software copyrights protection law system, points out the lack of software protection legislation in our country.The third part is "Practical Methodology". (Chapter6) Based on industry mode of the software copyrights protection for China’s software legislation protection, this part puts forward a series of legislative ideas and specific recommendations.