Legal Question in Technology Law in Virginia

Hello,

This question also touches upon copyright law.

Scenario: A well known company has written exam prep software which uses their own home grown software to test and prepare applicants by using previously release questions (from the examination board). One can purchase the said software and they have a period of time to use it after which it expires.

However, even after the software expires the purchaser can search his provided CD ROMs and load up each individual question (a .jpg) file along with the answers correlating to the questions (each answer is also a separate JPG!). This makes it a bit more time consuming however, since all the JPGs are provided on the CDs, the expiration of the software doesn't prevent you from looking at the JPGs yourself.

Touchy area:

If I create a software program that merely organizes these images into a more organized(Question, Options, Answer) format and keeps track and performs statistical analysis on what you got wrong or right, am I breaking copyright laws? Again, I am not providing the questions or the texts to my customers. I am only providing a program that organize data that they have already purchased from the third party. I'm guessing that your bar exam prep software is similar to what I am explaining.

The license agreement of original software states that one is not purchasing the CDs but merely licensing them for a period of time.

What do you think? Am I breaking copyright laws? I have not reverse engineered the original software in any way but however have emulated parts of its functionality.

Thanks


Asked on 6/29/10, 6:55 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Michael Hendrickson Law Office Michael E. Hendrickson

What you've described does not sound like an example of the Fair Use doctrine to me, i.e., orgainizing the owner company's (presumably) copyrighted images "into a more orgainized format" and then offering for sale these images contained in your software program, which could well be a violation of federal copyright law

(in my opinion).

However, you might want to get the opinion of an attorney on the matter who regularly practices in the area of intellectual property law.

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Answered on 6/29/10, 2:20 pm


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