Directive 2009/24 on the legal protection of computer programs does not allow the holder of that protection to prohibit the marketing by a third party of software which merely changes variables transferred temporarily to a game console’s RAM, ruled the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in a judgment delivered on Thursday 17 October (case C-159/23).
In Germany, Sony, which markets PlayStation consoles and games for these consoles, requested the withdrawal of products from Datel, which offers software and the Tilt FX device compatible with PlayStation and presents users with game options not initially intended for one of its games. It claimed that Datel’ s products infringe its exclusive right to authorise transformations to the software which underpins its games.
Datel’s software is installed by the user on the PlayStation and runs at the same time as the game software. It does not change or reproduce either the object code, the source code or the internal structure and organisation of Sony’s software. It merely changes the content of the variables temporarily transferred by Sony’s games to the console’s RAM, which are used during the running of the game. Thus, the game runs on the basis of those variables to the changed content.
Referred to by the German Federal Court of Justice, the CJEU finds that the content of the variable data transferred by a computer program to the RAM of a computer and used by that program in its running does not fall within the protection specifically conferred by the European directive, in so far as that content does not enable such a program to be reproduced or subsequently created.
According to the Court, the directive protects only the intellectual creation as it is reflected in the text of the computer program’s source code and object code. On the other hand, it does not protect the functionalities of the program or the elements by means of which users make use of such functionalities, unless they allow that program to be reproduced or subsequent created.
To see the judgment of the CJEU: https://aeur.eu/f/dxp (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)