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Suppose I build and sell closed-source and proprietary software that exactly looks like Microsoft Visual Studio 2022, both in appearance and functionality, but uses a different source code, name, and logo.

Am I breaking the intellectual property law of the USA?

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user366312
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  • I don´t know what is the status of the style and the trademark. But the functionalities are already copycats of other software. The original version of VisualStudio copied Borland's C++ Builder and JBuilder, so much that it pushed Borland into bankruptcy. With time it kept copying the solutions of other IDEs. Now if you install and play with all the open source IDEs out there you will find that they all have a lot in common. The features you pointed out except for the design of two icons are not unique. – FluidCode Jan 28 '24 at 14:38
  • Does this answer your question? Is loading assets from another game's install folder copyright infringement? – Trish Jan 29 '24 at 09:07

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That depends on what you mean by "looks like". Functionality and general looks cannot be protected.

For example, take Open/Libre Office. They look roughly the same. They have a save icon that displays a disk in the same place doing the same thing as Microsoft Office.

But you are not allowed to copy anything that has a copyright on it. So for example, you will probably need your own save icon. It can be an icon, it can be black and white, it can be a picture of a disk, but it cannot be the exact one Microsoft used (assuming it is their intellectual property/copyrighted material).

nvoigt
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