Autodesk Inc v Dyason

Autodesk Inc. appealed to the High Court of Australia against a decision of the Full Federal Court concerning alleged copyright infringement of its computer program. The dispute centred on whether the respondent, Mr. Dyason, had infringed Autodesk's copyright in its AutoCAD software by creating and selling a "key emulator" device. This device was designed to bypass the security mechanism of the AutoCAD software, which required a specific hardware key to operate. Autodesk contended that the key emulator, by interacting with the software's code, constituted an unauthorised reproduction of a substantial part of its literary work, namely the computer program.

The High Court was required to determine whether a computer program, as a literary work under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), was confined to its expression in written form or if it extended to the functional operation and reproduction of its instructions in a non-written form. Specifically, the court had to consider whether the reproduction of a substantial part of a computer program, for the purposes of copyright infringement, necessitated the reproduction of the program itself as a computer program, or if the reproduction of its underlying code or instructions in a different form, such as the functional operation enabled by the key emulator, could constitute infringement.

The High Court, in allowing the appeal, held that a computer program is a literary work within the meaning of the Copyright Act. The court reasoned that copyright protection extends to the expression of a computer program, regardless of the form in which that expression is embodied. It was determined that the key emulator, by replicating the functional operation of the security code within the AutoCAD program, constituted a reproduction of a substantial part of the copyright work. The court rejected the argument that infringement required the reproduction of the program in a form that was itself a computer program, finding that the functional reproduction of the code's instructions was sufficient to establish infringement. The appeal was allowed with costs.