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The idea–expression distinction or idea–expression dichotomy is a legal doctrine in the United States that limits the scope of copyright protection by differentiating an idea from the expression or manifestation of that idea.
United States copyright law protects original expressions but not facts, methods, discoveries, or other ideas being expressed, a doctrine known as the idea–expression distinction. Despite making this distinction, verbatim copying is not always required for copyright infringement, as paraphrasing is also prohibited in certain circumstances. [6]
The idea–expression divide differentiates between ideas and expression, and states that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the ideas themselves. This principle, first clarified in the 1879 case of Baker v.
Another author is free to describe the same theory in their own words without infringing on the original author's copyright. [8] Although fundamental, the idea–expression dichotomy is often difficult to put into practice. Reasonable people can disagree about where the unprotectable "idea" ends and the protectable "expression" begins.
Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1879), is a leading Supreme Court of the United States copyright case cited to explain the idea-expression dichotomy. The court held that a book did not give an author the right to exclude others from practicing what was described in the book, only right to exclude reproduction of the material in the book.
By what is commonly referred to as the idea/expression dichotomy, copyright law protects an author's expression, but not the idea behind that expression. [6] In a computer program, the lowest level of abstraction, the concrete code of the program, is clearly expression, while the highest level of abstraction, the general function of the program ...
The scope of copyright limitations and exceptions became a subject of societal and political debate within various nations in the late 1990s and early 2000s, largely due to the impact of digital technology, the changes in national copyright legislations for compliance with TRIPS, and the enactment of anti-circumvention rules in response to the ...
In order to qualify for protection, a work must be an expression with a degree of originality, and it must be in a fixed medium, such as written down on paper or recorded digitally. [67] [68] The idea itself is not protected. That is, a copy of someone else's original idea is not infringing unless it copies that person's unique, tangible ...