Under the Copyright Act, a compilation is a “work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term compilation includes collective works” 17 U.S.C. 101. This gives the compilation a separate copyright from any of the individual pieces within it. An author who creates a compilation owns the copyright of the compilation but not of the component parts.
Yes, the complete program (collection) is possibly copyrighted, but the invididual functions aren’t. I don’t care about your main(), I care about your generateUniqueDeviceKey().
The compilation only copyrights the specific selection of works within it. The works themselves don’t get copyrighted.
I personally care about the full product, because that’s what I’m selling. I have no idea why your generateUniqueDeviceKey would be valuable on its own.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/compilation
Yes, the complete program (collection) is possibly copyrighted, but the invididual functions aren’t. I don’t care about your main(), I care about your generateUniqueDeviceKey().
The compilation only copyrights the specific selection of works within it. The works themselves don’t get copyrighted.
I personally care about the full product, because that’s what I’m selling. I have no idea why your
generateUniqueDeviceKeywould be valuable on its own.