Sega v. Richards

Citation: Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Richards, [1983] F.S.R. 73.

In this case, Sega, the owner of the Frogger videogame, claiming infringement of the computer program that controlled the play of the game. The defendant admitted that the allegedly infringing program was based on the Frogger machine code program. The court analyzed the evidence presented concerning the creation of computer programs and concluded that:


 * copyright under the provisions relating to literary works in the Copyright Act of 1956 subsists in the assembly code program. . . . The machine code program derived from it by the operation of the part of the system of the computer called the assembler is to be regarded . . . as either a reproduction or an adaptation of the assembly code program, and accordingly, for the purposes of deciding this motion . . . copyright does subsist in the program.