Press Release: 1 October 1999
Powerflex Corporation Wins Resounding Victory in High Court
High Court Judgment- 30 September 1999 | Comment by Trumble Szanto Lawyers | Earlier Judgment - 4 June 1997
Yesterday the High Court of Australia handed down its final judgment in our long-running copyright battle with Data Access Corporation. The result is a resounding victory for us and for the whole developer community.
Data Access had originally claimed that our application development product PFXplus was far more than just compatible with their own product, Dataflex. They claimed that it breached their copyright by using the same or similar language, keywords, macros, file structures, function keys and error messages.
Although partially successful in the lower court, Data Access lost convincingly on appeal to the Full Bench of the Federal Court. The High Court has confirmed the correctness of that judgment, dismissing the appeal with costs.
Data Access based its appeal on a much narrower claim, that individual reserved words such as PRINT and GOSUB are computer programs, or that the collection of reserved words taken together is a computer program. Although this is obviously untrue in the normal sense of computer program, they claimed that in the rather specialised sense of the Copyright Act, this was the Law.
The High Court disagreed, and said so very firmly. In a 43-page judgment that will be widely quoted for years to come, the Court drew firm lines on the definition of computer program and clarified the meaning of the term "adaptation."
The Court went even further, disagreeing with parts of its judgment in an earlier case, Autodesk vs Dyason, and suggesting the need for changes to the law in another area related to protection of tables included in programs.
David Bennett, Managing Director of Powerflex Corporation, said "For us, the result is that our PFXplus product range has now been judged to be legal by the highest court in the country. It is untainted by any adverse threat or claim and there are no further legal avenues open. Our customers can rest easy."
This is a victory for common sense and competition. The High Court went to considerable trouble to draw lines between simple copying (piracy) and the similarities which inevitably arise with compatible and competing products. For a country like Australia with lots of talent but which is often not the first into a market, this is a great result and a landmark decision.
To find our more, view the judgment.
Powerflex Corporation is a privately held company that specialises in the development and marketing of application development tools for Windows, Unix and compatible computer systems. Its major product is PFXplus, a multi-user application development product with database, graphical and non-graphical user interface support, available for Windows, Unix and MS-DOS.