Managing Legal Issues in the Software Development Life Cycle

INTRODUCTION Copyright laws allow for the protection of the rights of literary and artistic creators. The kinds of works that copyright covers include literary works such as novels, poems, plays, reference works, newspapers, and computer programs; databases; films, musical compositions, and choreography; artistic works such as paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture; architecture; and advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.1,2 As technology makes it even easier to share data and information, it has become more important for new laws to be introduced,3 laws that cover the protection of intellectual property which is in a digital form. This article examines the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its effects on software products. It then investigates two case studies and the legal implications of DMCA in the cases because both cases involved the development of software that could be potentially used P A Y O F F I D E A