A Study Over the Protectability of Ideas and Concept Leading to Computer Programs in Light of the Navitaire Judgement of the England and Wales High Court of Justice

Abstract

One of the fundamental issues of copyright law is the separation between ideas and works, and whether ideas are protected. The main aim of the copyright law is to protect existing concrete works, to promote the creation of new works and to provide a fair royalty in exchange for the authors' labour. On the other side, intellectual progress shall not to be halted. Therefore, one of the main principles of the copyright law is to protect works instead of ideas. However, for some types of works, because of the interlock between idea and work, and the difficulty to separate them, some problems might occur such as extending the protection over the ideas as well. In computer programs, scope of protection covers the expression of a computer program in a computer language, i.e. concrete version of ideas and principles behind the computer program in the computer realm. In some circumstances, it might be requested that the protection for computer programs should also cover the functioning, underlying ideas and principles, interfaces and commands, operation logic, and even the look and feel of the program. In this work, in light of an English court's decision, we will discuss the problems above within the frame of Turkish law.