4 June 1997
Powerflex wins Copyright Battle against Data Access Corporation
This is the edited text of a message sent to our customers immediately after the judgment was handed down by the Full Bench of the Federal Court on 4th June 1997. A more detailed analysis, press releases and links to the judgment will be posted as they become available.
Appeal Court judgment | 1 October 1999 The Latest News
Unanimous Decision of the Full Bench of the Federal Court in our Favour
June 4, 1997. In a landmark decision, the Full Bench of the Federal Court yesterday unanimously decided that Powerflex/ PFXplus does not infringe on the copyright of Dataflex, except in one minor detail. The Appeal was upheld in almost its entirety, every major point won. The original claim and application were dismissed, except for the one minor point (the standard Huffman table). The judgment and orders of the lower court were set aside.
The judgment is a model of simplicity and clarity. It applies simple copyright principles of protection for expression not ideas, and clarifies the interpretation of the definitions of computer program and the word adaptation. It confirms that the law actually says what we always believed it did.
The court made no orders except that we must remove the Dataflex standard Huffman table from any software we make or sell in Australia in the future. Since this comprises just 768 bytes out of a total of over 500K (less than 0.2%), and few of our customers use the feature, this is truly a minor detail. As before, the orders apply only to Australia.
Powerflex is legal!
The Powerflex language, Flexkeys, reserved words, file structures, macros, and all the other features are now free of any threat from Data Access Corporation. Our loyal customers and their customers can breathe easier. And so can the Australian software industry.
Thank you all for your support. It has been a difficult time, but the end is now in sight. We can concentrate all our efforts on writing better software.