XML Schemas and Computer Language Copyright: Filling in the Blanks in Blank Esperanto

Journal of Intellectual Property Law Volume 9 | Issue 1 Article 3 October 2001 XML Schemas and Computer Language Copyright: Filling in the Blanks in Blank Esperanto Douglas E. Phillips Washington, D.C. Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/jipl Part of the Computer Engineering Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Douglas E. Phillips, XML Schemas and Computer Language Copyright: Filling in the Blanks in Blank Esperanto, 9 J. Intell. Prop. L. 63 (2001). Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/jipl/vol9/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Georgia Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Intellectual Property Law by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Georgia Law. For more information, please contact . Phillips: XML Schemas and Computer Language Copyright: Filling in the Blank XML SCHEMAS AND COMPUTER LANGUAGE COPYRIGHT: FILLING IN THE BLANKS IN BLANK ESPERANTO Douglas E. Pbillips* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ...................................... 64 II. HTML, XML, AND XML SCHEMAS ....................... 67 III. COPYRIGHTABILITY OF COMPUTER LANGUAGES ............ A. COMPUTER LANGUAGES AS SYSTEMS ................... B. COMPUTER LANGUAGES AS NOT FULLY FIXED ............ IV. THE SPECIAL CASE OF XML SCHEMAS .................... A. XML AND V. W 3C ..................................... 72 76 78 80 82 B. USE OF XML SYNTAX ................................ C. COPYING OF XML SCHEMAS ........................... 83 84 THE WORK AND THE IDEA ............................. 86 A. THE MEANING OF "IDEA".. ............................ B. LEVELS OF ABSTRACTION ............................ C. RETURNING TO BAKER V. SELDEN ...................... D. RECENT MERGER DECISIONS .......................... 90 1. Model Laws ..................................... 2. Industry Classifications ............................. VI. CONCLUSION ........................................ 93 97 100 101 102 105 * The author is a lawyer in Washington, D.C. The views in this article are solely his own. The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments of David Barg, Edmond Phillips,J. Gregory Swift, and Carolyn Taylor. Published by Digital Commons @ Georgia Law, 2001 1 Journal of Intellectual Property Law, Vol. 9, Iss. 1 [2001], Art. 3 J. INTELL. PROP.L. [Vol. 9:63 I. INTRODUCTION "Supposesome one devised a set ofwords or symbols toform a new abstractspeech, with inflections, but as yet with no meaning, a kind of blank Esperanto." Learned Hand, 1921' XML, the Extensible Markup Language, "has taken the computer world by storm."2 One of the countless XML primers on computer bookshelves proclaims: "XML promises to transform the basic structure of the Web, moving beyond HTML and replacing it with a stronger, more extensible architecture."' Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, calls XML a "breakthrough technology."4 According to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, XML is one of two main technologies that will create the "Semantic Web," which "will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users."' XML is not itself a complete markup language. Rather, XML has been called a language for creating other languages.6 More specifically, XML is a syntax that allows computer users to create their own sets of markup tags, also known as "schemas."' The "most widely used markup language in the universe" is HTML, the HyperText Markup Language.! HTML is used primarily to control the appearance of documents on the World Wide Web.9 XML, in contrast, enables users to specify markup tags that identify ' Reiss v. Nat'l Quotation Bureau, Inc., 276 F. 717, 718 (S.D.N.Y. 1921). BRIAN E. TRAVIS, XML AND SOAP PROGRAMMING FOR BIzTALK SERVERS xiii (2000). SOAP, the Simple Object Access Protocol, "is an Internet Engineering Task Force (ETF) Internet draft that lets you invoke procedures on remote systems by using a standard set of XML tags." Id. at 18. ' SIMON ST. LAURENT, XML: A PRIMER 1 (2d ed. 1999). 4 TRAVIS, supra note 2, at xiii. ' Tim Berners-Lee et al., The Semantic Web: A New Form of Web Content That Is Meaningful to Computers Will Unleash a Revolution ofNew Possibilities,Sci.AM. 34, 36 (May 2001). Like any computer trend, XML also has its skeptics. See Peter Lucas, Pumped Up. Business Reachesfor the Promise of XML, ELECTRoNIc COM. WORLD, April 2001, at 25 ("When Extensible Markup Language debuted as a data exchange language in the late 1990s, it did not take long for chief technology officers to discover that the initial hype surrounding XML was overblown."). 6 ELIZABETH CASTRO, XML FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB 35 (2001). TRAVIS, supra note 2, at 1, 40-42. la at 35. Travis cites estimates "that 100 billion HTML pages are on the Web." Id 9 ST. LAURENT, supra note 3, at 10 ("HTML was doomed to life as a formatting language instead of a structured framework for documents"). 2 http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/jipl/vol9/iss1/3 2 Phillips: XML Schemas and Computer Language Copyright: Filling in the Blank 2001] BLANK ESPERANTO document elements according to their content."0 Then, with style sheets, XML can be used to serve documents on the Web, or otherwise exchange documents over networks, so that the documents not only appear as intended but also allow search engines and software agents to locate and process particular types of content by referring to the specified tags.1 XML, in other words, is something like the "blank Esperanto" that Learned Hand imagined-with XML's syntax specifying the "inflections," and XML schemas filling in the blanks. Hand concluded that the core set of words, symbols, and inflections, even if meaningless, could be protected by copyright. 2 But how does such a view hold up today, eighty years later? And how does it apply to copyright in the schemas that extend XML's vocabulary and give meaning to XML documents? The XML specification is an open standard set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a group of companies that includes software industry leaders."3 The copyright status of XML schemas, however, is an open question. One XML entrepreneur states: "XML schemas are becoming the intellectual property of e-business... "14 Although some authors of XML schemas have explicitly dedicated them to the public domain,"5 others treat 10Id. at 15. HTML can be written as XML using the XHTML specification. TIM BERNERS-LEE & MARK FiscHETTI, WEAVING THE WEB: THE ORIGINAL DESIGN AND ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB BY ITS INVENTOR 162 (1999). " See ST. LAURENT, supra note 3, at 1 (introducing the capabilities of XML). u Reiss, 276 F. at 718, 719. " See W3C Intellectual Property FAQ, at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/IPR-FAQ20000620.html (last visited Aug. 30, 2001) (explai (...truncated)