ECJ asked to confirm that emulating software does not infringe copyright OUT-LAW News, 27/07/2010 A small software company did not infringe copyright in analytical software giant SAS's software by writing a program that emulated its functions, the High Court has provisionally ruled. The Court has asked the European Court of Justice, though, to check that its interpretation of laws based on the EU's Software Directive [2009/24/EC] and Information Society [2001/29/EC] Directive is correct. SAS makes programmes which enable customers to analyse data and write other programs within the SAS environment to carry out specific functions. World Programming Limited (WPL) wrote a piece of software which would allow former SAS users to execute programs written in SAS's language without continuing to pay SAS for the use of its systems. WPL's software emulated the SAS system in an attempt to ensure that computer code written in the SAS system would behave in the same way in its system, which WPL said is cheaper than SAS's. SAS claimed that WPL's software infringed its copyright, broke the terms of its software licence with WPL itself and that WPL infringed its copyright by copying and reusing sections of its manuals and guides. The High Court said that while copyright law protected the source code of software programs, it did not prevent one company writing software that emulated the functionality of other software. Prosegue qui: http://www.out-law.com/page-11254