Edozo Limited v Valos (UK) Limited

Copyright in a computer program protects the expression of the author’s intellectual creation, not the program’s functionality. The functionality includes what the program does and how it responds to inputs, including the sequence of user-facing steps. Copying that functionality into independently written software is therefore not, by itself, an act of infringement of copyright in the original source code.

The ideas–expression distinction incorporates both substantiality and the requirement that the alleged taking relates sufficiently to the nature of the copyright work. Copyright in source code cannot be used indirectly to protect the underlying business logic or functions of a computer program.

Edozo and Valos competed in supplying property valuation and related information through software platforms. Valos counterclaimed for copyright infringement, alleging that Edozo’s platform and user interfaces indirectly copied the source code of Valos’s computer programs through similarities in the sequence and operation of the systems.

For the purposes of the strike-out application, the court assumed that Edozo had copied the relevant user-facing steps. The central issue was whether reproducing those functional steps through independently written software could constitute infringement of copyright in Valos’s source code.

1. Application allowed. The pleaded allegations of indirect infringement of copyright in the Original Valos Computer Program, Subsequent Valos Computer Programs and Valos Coded Prompts were struck out.
2. Section 16(3)(b) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 permits indirect copying. An unbroken chain of copying may pass through an intermediary which is not itself a copyright work. The intermediary must, however, be sufficiently precise to allow substantial reproduction of the copyright work.
3. The court accepted that software could be written so as to perform steps replicating the operation of another program. That did not resolve whether the copying was legally actionable.
4. The Valos Steps formed part of the functionality of the Valos Computer Programs. They were not a form of expression of the relevant intellectual creation, namely the Valos source code. Copying the Valos Steps by creating corresponding Edozo Steps was therefore not an act capable in law of infringing copyright in the source code.
5. The reasoning in Navitaire Inc v easyJet Airline Co Ltd and Nova Productions Ltd v Mazooma Games Ltd, together with the Court of Appeal’s analysis in SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd, confirmed that functionality and business logic are on the ideas side of the copyright boundary. Preparatory design work may be protected as a literary work in its expressed form, but the functions themselves are not protected.
6. The possibility that the Valos Steps might attract copyright in their own literary or artistic form, or might be patentable, did not alter the result. Copyright in source code could not be extended to protect functionality through an indirect-copying claim.