Because of the unique nature BAR characterizes existing data, a few intellectual property (I.P.) issues need to be addressed here.
Many individuals lack a basic understanding of I.P. issues, confusing copyright law with patent law and trademark law. What often happens is that individuals think their work is protected when in fact it is not, and vice versa.
BAR and BARfly support an entirely new type of medium (the binary schema, or BAR implementation file), so some discussion is needed on how this medium coincides with the existing I.P. legal framework. In the paragraphs below, copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret legal issues are discussed, as well as how they relate to BAR.
Copyright is the legal right to the reproduction and distribution of a particular piece of work. By writing something down, drawing a picture, recording your voice on tape, etc., you are creating something that is copyright of a particular entity (in most cases, you, the author).
The copyright of an I.F. generally goes to its author. However, if you perform the creation of the work under contract to another entity, copyright ownership is not as straightforward. A part of your employment agreement might be that some or all work you create while working for that employer becomes the employer's property.
Nothing needs to be novel about something you are writing down in I.F. source for it to be subject to copyright. However, the work must be your own. If you directly copy implementation file source text and pass the text off as your own without permission or authorization, this is plaigiarism, and you have likely violated the owner's copyright.
Obviously, the versatile nature of code means that the size, complexity, and presence of copyright markings impact the extent to which works can be claimed for relatively small "example" portions of code. Unmarked function examples (such as those found in forums and online help) and brief "Hello World"-type implementation files are not intended to be subject to copyright.
The "AUTHOR" field of an I.F. describes the copyright owner (in most cases, the author). Since this is present in both source text (global variable initial value) as well as in the compiled binary rendition, the field is unambiguous in its meaning.
If an I.F. has no "AUTHOR" field, the only other way to characterize the copyright owner is to place copyright markings in the source text as remarks. For example, '//This file is copyright (C) of Joe Blow 2009.'
Placing copyright messages is not a bad idea even if the "AUTHOR" field is specified, but it is discouraged from being considered an adequate means of characterizing copyright ownership of an I.F. If an I.F. is saved in binary-only form, such comments are lost, leaving only the compiled binary rendition behind (which would have no copyright owner identification).
The "SOURCE" field is not a legally binding field; it is intended to act as a "bibliography." In order to create an I.F., a person typically must refer to existing documentation, usually work that the I.F. designer did not create on their own. The "SOURCE" field indicates one or more sources for the information that factored into the implementation file's creation.
Because both binary and text portions of an I.F. are subject to copyright law, usage of implementation files distributed on this website is governed by license agreements. You must agree to such terms when you download an I.F.
Very little about I.F. creation concerns trademarks and trade names. Implementation files start as plain text, leaving no possibility of formatting names or logos in such a manner that would cause an obvious trademark or trade name violation.
If it is necessary to refer to a trademarked product in the source text of an I.F., you can identify the trademark with the text (TM) for trademark, and (R) for registered trademark.
You do not create a trademarked expression by creating an I.F. with the expression in the source text. Other legal steps are necessary to enact trademark ownership.
Patent law is one of the most complex and hard-to-understand branches of I.P. law. While copyright refers to actual work created, patent covers the nature of the methods and techniques used to enact a solution or make a product function.
An I.F. is covered by patent law only when a patent has been explicitly filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Of course, the entire I.F. is not what is subject to patent protections: only unique, novel, and nonobvious methods used in the body of the I.F. are patentable.
Obtaining a patent is a difficult process, requiring significant time and monetary resources. For this reason, patent law is not discussed in detail here. However, if you have come up with an algorithm in an I.F. that you believe is patentable, you are entitled to obtain your own patents as long as you have a legally licensed copy of BARfly Gold.
An I.F. you create entirely on your own might still be subject to others' patents. For example, JFIF arithmetic encoding (but not JFIF Huffman encoding) is subject to patent protections. This means that creating an I.F. on your own that deserializes or serializes JFIF arithmetic encoding may satisfy copyright issues, but not patent issues.
This website respects the software patents of others. Every attempt is made to identify patent-holders and structure the I.F. licenses around such I.P. already in existence.
There is a provisional patent pending for the BAR deserialization procedure. This patent only protects the algorithms used to deserialize data files using implementation files; it does not place undue burden on using the files in applications like BARfly.
If you use the BAR engine in your own software, you are subject to the aforementioned patent.
Trade secrets are often misunderstood. A trade secret is only as good as it is an actual secret (meaning, concerted attempts are made to keep the secret content secret). A trade secret must be protected by strong passwords, locked in safes, or have some other form of explicit protection guarding against its general access.
Implementation files distributed on this website are not trade secrets because you have the capacity to download, examine, and use them. However, you might want to keep an I.F. you have developed on your own a trade secret. To do so, you must take steps to protect the I.F. from general knowledge.
Keeping an I.F. you have developed under a secure company intranet, accessible to limited users, may qualify the I.F. as a trade secret. Posting the I.F. on a forum or forwarding its contents to this site will immediately disqualify the I.F. as a trade secret.
