A Quarter Century of International Copyright on Software.

A quarter of a century ago, under the new TRIPS Agreement, copyright protection for software became the international norm. Whether copyright is in fact an appropriate form of protection for software was and still is debated; the issues raised in the ongoing high-profile Google v. Oracle dispute, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, are among the continuing and significant problems that the extension of copyright to software have generated. This article reviews the coexistence between software and copyright law; it focuses on their mutual effects and the adjustments in each that resulted from their coexistence. The article notes the technological changes that coincided with or followed the adoption of the international norm and that significantly affected the coexistence between software and copyright law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]