Can someone copyright a SQL query? [closed]

Question

If I were you, I would write a full description of what the query needs to do, including all the tables, fieldnames etc., and post that here. Someone here is bound to be able to write a new version of the query that is not copyright your developer, and you can edit it each year to your hearts content.

He charges $500 to change 2009 to 2010? Oh man what a rip.

This year pay him his $500 and tell him you want the query to take the school year as a parameter. See how he reacts to knowing this will be his last time working for you.

First, the standard disclaimer: I'm not an attorney, so don't take anything I say as legal advice.

What I'm saying below is about the law in the United States -- in other countries it is likely to vary, though thanks to the Berne Convention, copyright law is fairly uniform across many countries.

Copyright can cover creative, written works, and I'd say a SQL query can/does fall within that range.

At the same time, unless his contract with the school is written quite strangely, he wrote this for them as a work for hire. In that case, his claim of copyright is probably an outright falsehood -- when a work is written for hire, the hirer, not the author, owns the copyright.

There seems to be some controversy about what constitutes a work made for hire. According to US law (17 USC, §101):

 A “work made for hire” is—

  (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment;

  or

  (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a
  collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work,
  as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an
  instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an
  atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by
  them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.

Since this query seems to fall within the scope of '(1)', it can qualify as a work made for hire, even without an express agreement to that effect. The possible exception would be if his contract was written so it excluded writing the query from falling within the scope of his employment.

The only part that's really open to question is whether he qualifies as an employee or not. In the case of a consultant, that can be a difficult question to answer. Basically, if he work's completely independently, and just delivers a final result then he's probably not. If he works about like a normal employee, and they have control over things like his schedule and such, then there's a pretty good chance that he would qualify as just a temporary employee.

Yes, SQL queries CAN be protected by copyright.

The question you really need to be asking is - does he actually own the copyright, or is he just saying he does. This would depend on the terms of the contract under which the query was written.

Edit: I want to modify my answer - you can do what you wish with it (I am not a lawyer!), as long as there is no strange contract involved.

Case 1: He sold you the .sql file as a "program" - the .sql file itself is the program, and you can modify it however you want - same with if you buy any application you can open it with a hex editor and change bits around. There is no EULA prohibiting this.

Case 2: He sold you the .sql file as source code - he sold you the source meaning the source was what you bought from him and again you can modify it as you're just modifying what you bought.

People are getting too caught up in the fact that you can "view the source" of a .sql file - it's either a program or it's a source file depending on the contract, and either way you can modify it. Copyright protects people from unauthorized distribution, not modification for internal use.

Find someone who has never seen the extorter's code to inspect the table structure and derive an equivalent query in a cleanroom fashion.

Per US copyright law, section 102, paragraph b:

In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

Here's the original.

DISCLAIMER: me != lawyer

Just a thought: you may find it cheaper to have a lawyer review this, than to pay $500/yr for updates..