A New York judge has ruled that a software house could not
successfully sue an author for copyright infringement when the
author used its software to produce matrices for his best-selling
book, although the software itself was eligible for protection.
Torah Soft Limited sued Michael Drosnin over his book, “The
Bible Code.” It is about a hidden code in the Bible, discovered by
an Israeli mathematician that, according to some researchers,
appears to reveal the details of events that took place thousands
of years after the Bible was written. The story claims that God
enclosed prophecies in a skip code - every fifth letter in the
Hebrew sentences forms a word. The code is said to be so complex
that only a computer can find it – and that has only latterly
become possible. One such event correctly predicted was the
assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, according to
the author.
Drosnin used software developed specially for deciphering the
text that was owned by Torah Soft. The company argued that Drosnin
infringed its copyright when he reproduced printouts of matrices
based on the software’s results from searching the Hebrew text.
However, Federal Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled that the
printouts of searches carried out with the software cannot be
protected by copyright and dismissed the case, partly on the
grounds that the matrices produced by it are similar in layout to
similar software products, making the layout a “stock feature” of
such software.
