European software developers may be smirking today. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled yesterday that functions performed by computer programs are not entitled to copyright protection.

SAS Institute Inc. asked the European Union’s highest court to extend copyright protection to computer programs in a case that may limit the ability of companies to work with competing software.

In the first part of this series of Industry Insights, I introduced the issue of software and patents. In this Industry Insight, I will consider how copyrights and patents differ in the domain of ...