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If it’s patentable, and the first group successfully patents it, they own the processes that are claimed in the patent, and can attempt to stop others from using the same processes, unless licensed, by suing.
If it’s not patented, the principal remaining forms of intellectual property protection are trade secrets, copyright, and trademark. Trade secrets would not be applicable in your example, deebs, because the two groups are truly independent.
Trademark doesn’t seem especially applicable, because it goes to the "marks" under which something is marketed, and nothing else.
Copyright allows the writer of words or the depicter of images to own his or her words or images. That includes computer code and program screens. If the two groups independently came up with slightly different code that did the same thing, neither violates the other’s copyright. And even if some lines of code are identical, the courts have recognized that there may be only one efficient way to tell a computer to do some task, and that using that text is not a creative act that gives one the ownership of the text. As to the screen designs, copyright law goes all over the place, but the bottom line is that there needs to be some degree of actual reproduction of the other’s work, not merely similarity.
So, for example, there may be 25 different filters in the Adobe Exchange that do the same basic squiggle effect, and the options for that squiggle are pretty much the same, so there is going to be a lot of similarity in the squiggle filters. There may even be some identical code, because there are only so many ways to code the call to PS to enlarge the brush size and increase the jitter, etc. It’s far from clear that non-identical but very similar squiggle filters, or whatever, infringe on each others’ copyrights.
If it’s not patented, the principal remaining forms of intellectual property protection are trade secrets, copyright, and trademark. Trade secrets would not be applicable in your example, deebs, because the two groups are truly independent.
Trademark doesn’t seem especially applicable, because it goes to the "marks" under which something is marketed, and nothing else.
Copyright allows the writer of words or the depicter of images to own his or her words or images. That includes computer code and program screens. If the two groups independently came up with slightly different code that did the same thing, neither violates the other’s copyright. And even if some lines of code are identical, the courts have recognized that there may be only one efficient way to tell a computer to do some task, and that using that text is not a creative act that gives one the ownership of the text. As to the screen designs, copyright law goes all over the place, but the bottom line is that there needs to be some degree of actual reproduction of the other’s work, not merely similarity.
So, for example, there may be 25 different filters in the Adobe Exchange that do the same basic squiggle effect, and the options for that squiggle are pretty much the same, so there is going to be a lot of similarity in the squiggle filters. There may even be some identical code, because there are only so many ways to code the call to PS to enlarge the brush size and increase the jitter, etc. It’s far from clear that non-identical but very similar squiggle filters, or whatever, infringe on each others’ copyrights.
MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥
– in 4 materials (clay versions included)
– 12 scenes
– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups
– 6000 x 4500 px
