Are published recipes on the internet considered ’open source’ for commercial utilisation? Let’s say there is a site where everyone share recipes for cakes. Everything is public. Can you sell commercial product based on thoses recipes? Can you use the same name? Let’s say Jina Chocolate cake is very popular and public. Can you make and sell Jina Chocolate cake mix without heading into lawsuit? Update: My problem is with pottery glaze recipe like this one: https://glazy.org/recipes/56085 In those case it’s mix of chemical powder to achieve a glass coating with the desired color and effects. I didn’t think that the kind of recipe would have an effect but it seem there is a special case for cooking recipes.
Recipes are not subject to copyright although the particular manner in which the are expressed (e.g. on a printed page) is protected by copyright, under U.S. copyright law. This is not because they are &quot;public&quot; and is instead because the scope of copyright protection established under old case law that remains good law in the U.S., does not protect most kinds of creations historically made by women in the home. In the same vein, clothing designs, as a general rule, are not subject to copyright protection under U.S. law (&quot;as of 2016 [in] most countries (including the United States and the United Kingdom) fashion design[s] . . . are . . . excluded from protection by copyright laws&quot;). For example, this source explains: For much of modern history, and certainly in the early days of legal grants in IP, the formal roles from which IP might arise were closed to women. The creative occupations of artist, engineer, writer, scientist and musician were dominated by men, if not exclusive to men. At that time, social convention frowned on female activity in such professions. IP law, as it developed, followed such social prohibitions. For example, as noted by Professor Shelly Wright, copyright historically encompassed the “fine arts” such as sculpture, painting, literature and music – fields that were male dominated if not exclusively masculine, with “crafts” such as needlework, knitting, quilting and other “domestic” fiber arts until relatively recently excluded from the canon of copyrightable subject matter. See also, e.g., Ann Bartow, &quot;Fair Use And The Fairer Sex: Gender, Feminism, and Copyright Law&quot;, 14(3) Journal of Gender, Social Policy &amp; the Law 551 (2006). It is possible that the a stylized individual name for a recipe, as opposed to a generic name for the same recipe, at a minimum under common law trademark rights even if it is not protected by a federal or state trademark registration, may have trademark protection even though it is not protected by copyright.
This is going to depend on several things. First of all, do you have a lawful, licensed copy of the SDK? My understanding is that Nintendo only licensed the SDK to selected game companies. If what you have is an unauthorized copy, you do not have the legal right even to use it. If what you have is properly licensed, then you do. Or is what you have an unofficial SDK created by someone other than Nintendo? Secondly, what does the license agreement that comes with the SDK provide? Does it require developers to register with Nintendo? If it does, you will need to comply. Nintendo cannot prevent others from writing programs designed to run on their hardware. But they can control who uses their development software, if they choose to. You cannot reproduce in your game any of Nintendo's copyrighted software (or anyone else's) without permission. That applies even more strongly if you intend to sell the software. But you can use any development software for which you have a valid license in whatever ways its license permits. I would expect this includes creating games. It would include selling games that you create that do not use any of Nintendo's code, unless there is a specific provision forbidding that in the license agreement.
The first question is whose law you are concerned with, since in principle you might have violated copyright law in any country, and might be sued under the laws of multiple countries. The US has a concept of "fair use" which is notoriously difficult to apply. When you are sued in the US, you can defend against the allegation by arguing certain things: telegraphically, this includes purpose and character of use, nature of the work, substantiality in relation to the whole, and effect on market. Plus there is a 5th factor to be considered, transformativeness. The court then weighs these factors to decide if the use is "fair". By reading existing case law on the topic (conveniently available from the US Copyright office) you might develop a fact-based opinion of the risk: you would be vastly better off hiring an attorney who specializes in US copyright law to do an analysis for you. Do not hire a programmer to give you legal advice (do not hire an attorney to debug code). You would "fail" on the test of substantiality in that you are copying a highly substantial portion of the original work(s). You would "win" on nature of use (research especially non-profit and commentary are the underlying purposes that drive fair use law). It's not clear how you would fare w.r.t. nature of the work, which is intended to distinguish the extremes "news report" and "literature and artistic work" where copying news is at the fair use end of the spectrum. It is not clear how you would fare on "effect on market", but probably not so badly: are you avoiding some licensing fee? Coupled with the tranformativeness consideration, you are most likely having no effect on the market, since the product that you will distribute is not the original work, but a scientific conclusion about the work. Germany has different laws, and this article would be relevant if you cared about Germany. There was a change in the law that expanded the analog of fair use pertaining to research use. That law allows 15 percent of a work to be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public for the purpose of non-commercial scientific research. That, b.t.w., does not refer to what you are planning to do (unless you also publish quotes); for personal scientific research you may reproduce up to 75 percent. Since this is a new law only a year old, you could become part of the cutting edge in testing the limits of the law. So the standard disclaimer applies: ask your attorney. But note section 60d of the law which legalized data mining, and is squarely on point: (1) In order to enable the automatic analysis of large numbers of works (source material) for scientific research, it shall be permissible to reproduce the source material, including automatically and systematically, in order to create, particularly by means of normalisation, structuring and categorisation, a corpus which can be analysed and to make the corpus available to the public for a specifically limited circle of persons for their joint scientific research, as well as to individual third persons for the purpose of monitoring the quality of scientific research. In such cases, the user may only pursue non-commercial purposes. (2) If database works are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall constitute customary use in accordance with section 55a, first sentence. If insubstantial parts of databases are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall be deemed consistent with the normal utilisation of the database and with the legitimate interests of the producer of the database within the meaning of section 87b (1), second sentence, and section 87e. (3) Once the research work has been completed, the corpus and the reproductions of the source material shall be deleted; they may no longer be made available to the public. It shall, however, be permissible to transmit the corpus and the reproductions of the source material to the institutions referred to in sections 60e and 60f for the purpose of long-term storage.
It is unclear whether WINE is infringing copyright or if it can rely on a fair use defense. The CAFC held that: that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection In that light, if WINE had original content in the structure, sequence, and organization of its API, the CAFC would likely also find that it is entitled to copyright protection. However, because this issue is outside the scope of the CAFC's exclusive jurisdiction (this is a copyright issue, not a patent issue), the holdings are not binding in any other circuit. Each circuit is free to review anew the copyrightability of APIs when such a case comes up. My guess is that this is the reason the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on CAFC's Oracle v. Google opinion. To address your fair use question would be simply speculation, because fair use is always assessed case-by-case, and even in WINE's closest analogy (Oracle v. Google), the CAFC remanded the fair use question back to the trial court, and that question hasn't been decided yet: we remand for further consideration of Google’s fair use defense in light of this decision
It's not fair use. Fair use is when you do something that normally only the copyright holder can do. Playing a video game is the ordinary, intended use of the work. In the United States, ordinary use is not protected by copyright. 17 USC 106 sets out the rights protected by copyright. The include copying the work, producing derivative works, distributing the work, and so on. None of these are ordinary use. Someone could perhaps argue that you are creating a derivative work. I doubt that argument would work because you are not taking any protectable elements from the work. But if anyone did argue that, it would make sense to also argue that if that's so, your use would still be covered under fair use because it's transformative, does not substitute for the original work in any way, and takes very little of the work.
StackExchange probably has no obligation to continue to provide the content, however StackExchange probably cannot stop copies from continuing to be used, reproduced, etc. from the Terms of Service (click on Legal below): You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. Bold added by me. The content is licensed to SE, unlike some sites where you transfer ownership of content to the site. SE can continue to use your data, but you still own the copyright. They can't limit your use of your own content, because you remain the owner. SE cannot use your content in a way that violates the Creative Commons Share Alike License, but I don't see any limitations on how SE makes your work available, including to a limited audience. They could, for example, probably move to a paid model because there are no commercial exclusions (unlike the Creative Commons non-commercial variations of the license). You could post a copy of SE content elsewhere, as long as you adhere to the requirements: In the event that You post or otherwise use Subscriber Content outside of the Network or Services, with the exception of content entirely created by You, You agree that You will follow the attribution rules of the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license as follows: You will ensure that any such use of Subscriber Content visually displays or otherwise indicates the source of the Subscriber Content as coming from the Stack Exchange Network. This requirement is satisfied with a discreet text blurb, or some other unobtrusive but clear visual indication. You will ensure that any such Internet use of Subscriber Content includes a hyperlink directly to the original question on the source site on the Network (e.g., https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345) You will ensure that any such use of Subscriber Content visually display or otherwise clearly indicate the author names for every question and answer so used. You will ensure that any such Internet use of Subscriber Content Hyperlink each author name directly back to his or her user profile page on the source site on the Network (e.g., https://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username), directly to the Stack Exchange domain, in standard HTML (i.e. not through a Tinyurl or other such indirect hyperlink, form of obfuscation or redirection), without any “nofollow” command or any other such means of avoiding detection by search engines, and visible even with JavaScript disabled. Making a complete copy of SE would seem to be within the terms of the license, as long as all the requirements for attributing, linking, etc are met, so you could mitigate the risk of the SE material going away in that manner.
A translation is a devivative work - the copyright owner has the exclusive right to these So, yes, translation is prima facie copyright infringement. Strictly speaking, if you translate it, it's a derivative work because you exercised creativity in making the translation; what Google translate does is not a derivative work, it's a copy because there is no creativity. Either way, only the copyright owner can do (or authorise) this. Whether it's legal or not depends on if what you are doing falls within one of the exceptions to the applicable copyright law such as fair use or fair dealing. Attributing the original author does not, of itself, allow translation. Additionally, I'm not able to find the copyright documentation for the site link I provided above. What is "copyright documentation"? Copyright exists the moment a work is created and no further documentation is required. Essentially, I could translate the whole documentation by myself to avoid this problem. No, you can't - see above. If copy-pasting the google translate is illegal, then exactly how much must I edit, move around sentences, change words, and such until the text is no longer plagiarized? All of it. If you were, based on your own knowledge of the software, to write a manual without any copying o the existing manual, that would not be copyright infringement. Is this plagiarism or copyright infringement? It's copyright infringement - plagiarism is an academic misconduct issue not a legal one. where can I check the copyright for the above link? The site you linked has "Copyright © 2020 Acquia, Inc. All Rights Reserved" in the bottom left corner which identifies the copyright holder, the date and prohibits all copying ("all rights reserved"). This isn't necessary but it is helpful. If you really want to do this, contact Acquia, Inc and ask for permission.
It seems that you don’t understand what parody is. If you do understand, please explain how it’s even possible to parody computer code. What you can do with “open source” code depends on the licence the copyright holder(s) release it under. For some very permissive licences you can do what you suggest, for most, you can’t.