> Tengen convinced the United States Copyright Office to hand over the source code of the lockout chip
Wait, did the copyright office actually hold on to source code? Or is it that a court made Nintendo share it? I’m trying to wrap my head around the effort required to catalog all source code for copyright.
Oh yeah, back in the day you could log your source code with the copyright office for copyright (technically you still can).
The process is falling out of favor because the United States does not have a copyright regime where first filer is awarded the copyright, and creators are assumed to have copyright from the moment of creation. So if push comes to shove it is just easier to keep track of your own source code in your own repository and, should a court case ever come up, use your own documentation to prove the date of creation.
... Besides, in the modern era, things move so quickly and code churns so rapidly that, practically speaking, most source code is protected by trade secret and speed of development, not copyright. Once you do something clever and it's publicly visible, your competitors can probably just reverse engineer it without seeing your source code... You keep the edge by having moved on to the next clever thing already while they're still trying to implement the last clever thing you did.
Wait, did the copyright office actually hold on to source code? Or is it that a court made Nintendo share it? I’m trying to wrap my head around the effort required to catalog all source code for copyright.