LabVIEW
patent of .VI
vikash.csir@gmail.com wrote:
An application/software developed using "NI Academic Site License" can be protected using copyright?
You are appending to a thread that is 15 years old with a vague question. Protect from what, exactly?
If you have an academic site license, you are probably part of a university, and they own the rights to anything you "invent". As a first step, you might consult with the legal department of the university. We cannot give advice here.
Copyright generally is created automatically whenever you create a work. Work can be a text such as a poem, book or similar or a painfing or a music composition but it can be also the expression of code. So copyright simply exists once you create a work (note some jurisdiction might have different rules but in general you do not have to do anything special to have copyright). In fact you have usually to express specifically to waive your copyright in certain ways to allow anyone else to copy your work.
Now there is the situation where you might have to proof that you have the copyright on something rather than that it is an (unauthorized) copy of someone else’s work and then you can pay a lawyer to register your copyright. That way you can proof that your work existed at some point in time (when the lawyer attested that he saw your work as enclosed) and unless someone else can proof that his (identical) work wasn’t created before that time he can not claim that you infringed on his copyright.
Copyright does only protect from copying, it does not prevent someone else to write a similar text or song on its own. The same applies to software algorithms. Copyright is about the right to copy an existing work more or less verbatim. It does not prevent someone else to create their own work, even if it expresses very similar or even the same ideas or algorithms. As long as it is created and not just copied it is not a violation of copyright.
If you want to protect an idea itself, you need patents. And that is a costly and very cumbersome process
First have a look at the General Purpose Software License Agreement. Look at addendum E, specifically the sentence "Authorized Applications developed using Software subject to an academic license may not be distributed for commercial purposes and must be distributed with a prohibition against redistribution for commercial purposes.". Also be aware that if you distribute software, you are required to mention the various NI patents in e.g. the about" screen, see section 12B.
As I said, if you want to commercialize anything developed at an educational institution, you better talk to the university lawyers as a very first step! You cannot rely on legal advice given in a public forum!
Altenbach already pointed it out. The academic license is substantially discounted to help in teaching and only can be used for academic purposes. Once you want to commercialize the results (and why would you apply for a costly patent if you don’t plan to commercialize it?) you will need a commercial license to do that.
NI likely would not break down your front door immediately, but a cease and desist letter after you went successfully commercial could be very painful already and endanger the future of your endeavor.
