The SAS Institute, creators of the SAS System filed a lawsuit against World Programming Limited, creators of World Programming System in November 2009. The dispute was whether World Programming had infringed copyrights on SAS Institute Products, and Manuals and whether World Programming used SAS Learning Edition to reverse engineer SAS system in violation with its term of usage. The case is interesting because World Programming did not have access to the SAS Institute's source code, and so 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. Some observers say the case is as important as the Borland versus Lotus case. The EU Court of Justice 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.
On 23 July 2010 Justice Arnold in the High Court of England and Wales referred a number of questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union, but expressed his initial views of the main claims via the following observations in the initial judgment. Justice Arnold quoted from the "SAS language" article of Wikipedia in support of his view that SAS is a "programming language" : First, the decision confirms what WPL has always admitted, namely that it has used the SAS Manuals to emulate functionality of the SAS System in WPS. Secondly, it shows that to some extent WPL has reproduced aspects of the SAS Manuals going beyond that which was strictly necessary in order for WPS to emulate the functions of the SAS System. What it does not show is reproduction of the SAS source code by WPS going beyond the reproduction of its functionality. WPL's manual writers did not directly copy from the SAS Manuals in the sense of having one of the SAS Manuals open in front of them when writing the WPS Manual and intentionally either transcribing or paraphrasing the wording. A considerable degree of similarity in both content and language between the SAS Manual entries and the WPS Manual entries is to be expected given that they are describing identical functionality. The degree of resemblance in the language goes beyond that which is attributable to describing identical functionality. Justice Arnold referred certain questions to the CJEU. After the CJEU handed down its decision later in 2012, Justice Arnold in the High Court handed down his final judgement on 25 January 2013, which concluded :
The High Court referred several questions of the interpretation of the Computer Programs Directive and the Information Society Directive to the Court of Justice of the European Union, under the preliminary ruling procedure. Advocate-General Yves Bot gave his Opinion on 29 November 2011. The full judgement was handed down by the European Court of Justice on 2 May 2012. It largely adopted the Advocate-General's Opinion, holding that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions are covered by copyright. The Court concluded that: The case returned to the High Court of England and Wales which provided its final judgement on 25 January 2013 applying the CJEU findings to the particular facts of this case.
US lawsuit (initial filing)
The initial US case filed by SAS Institute against WPS was dismissed
US lawsuit (subsequent filing)
A subsequent US case filed by SAS Institute against WPL was won by SAS. After a three-week trial that ended on October 9, 2015, a jury in federal court awarded SAS $79.1 million in damages, after trebling. The jury ruled that WPL had engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices - specifically, that it had misrepresented its intentions in order to obtain the license to the software, and violated the contract granted, which only allowed for non-commercial use - and that it had infringed on the copyright of its manual by copying portions of it into its own manual. However, Judge Flanagan ruled against SAS in summary judgement that WPL had infringed on the copyright of SAS's software. WPL has announced its intention to appeal.
Implications
The UK case limited the aspects of computer programs which were eligible for copyright protection, and was subsequently cited in the case of Oracle Corporation's lawsuit against Google over the latter's use of Java in Android.
