The SAS Institute, creators of the SAS System filed a lawsuit against World Programming Limited, creators of World Programming System (WPS) in November 2009. The dispute was whether World Programming had infringed copyrights on SAS Institute Products, and Manuals and whether World Programming used SAS Learning Edition to reverse engineer SAS system in violation with its term of usage.
The case is interesting because World Programming did not have access to the SAS Institute's source code, and so the court considered the merits of a copyright claim based on observing functionality only. The European...