Verified65% confidenceFactExact time
In the absence of an explicit license, code is protected by copyright by default, and others have no right to copy, modify, or distribute it.
3
Sources
65%
Confidence
Long-term
Relevance
8/19/2026
First Seen
Sources
Related Claims
UnverifiedIn the EU, reverse engineering a purchased product is permitted under trade secret law, functionality itself is not protected by copyright but code is, and decompilation is allowed only under strict interoperability conditions.79% similarUnverifiedCopyright protects the specific expression of code rather than the functional logic itself; borrowing at the functional level generally does not constitute copyright infringement, but patents, trade secrets and trademark rights may still apply.78% similarUnverifiedDesign concepts and architectural ideas are generally not protected by copyright; only specific code implementations are bound by licenses.77% similarUnverifiedThe BSD 3-Clause license allows free use, copying, modification, and redistribution of code, with the sole restrictions being that the original copyright notice must be retained and the original project name may not be used for endorsement or promotion, and derivative works are not required to be open-sourced75% similarUnverifiedIf a work does not qualify for copyright protection in the first place, attaching standard open-source licenses such as MIT or GPL to it is logically contradictory, because one cannot grant rights one does not hold.74% similar
Cite This Claim
Stable URI
https://kongchang.com/claim/774415API
curl https://kongchang.com/api/v1/knowledge/claims/774415MCP
get_claim(id=774415)