SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd

SAS Institute Inc. v World Programming Ltd (2012) C-406/10 was a decision of the <a href="/facts/European_Court_of_Justice/yhkq7Y7Q">European Court of Justice</a> which established that copyright protection does not extend to software functionality, <a href="/facts/Programming_language/cWTYbgWa">programming languages</a>, and <a href="/facts/File_format/qrXbwJaH">file types</a>.
In September 2009, the American <a href="/facts/SAS_Institute/8AgnAKbf">SAS Institute</a>, which has developed the <a href="/facts/SAS_(software)/7y2ulIMX">SAS</a> <a href="/facts/Software_suite/4TlRyeus">software suite</a> since 1976, sued the British company <a href="/facts/World_Programming/6SL2b8IR">World Programming</a> in a copyright infringement claim against the <a href="/facts/World_Programming_System/Qxrr3LAU">World Programming System</a>. The SAS Institute claimed that World Programming had copied SAS' <a href="/facts/User_guide/sb0Crduq">software manuals</a> and used SAS Learning Edition licenses to <a href="/facts/Reverse_engineering/pmJCV7J7">reverse engineer</a> the program for their competing statistical analysis software.
Since World Programming lacked access to the SAS Institute's source code, the European Court of Justice the court considered the merits of a copyright claim based on observing functionality only. The European Committee for Interoperable Systems say that the case is important to the software industry.
The <a href="/facts/European_Court_of_Justice/yhkq7Y7Q">EU Court of Justice</a> ruled that copyright protection does not extend to the software functionality, the programming language used and the format of the data files used by the program. It stated that there is no copyright infringement when a company which does not have access to the source code of a program studies, observes, and tests that program to create another program with the same functionality.

SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd open-in-new

SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd