Excel Apps. and Copyright Issues

Hi,

I am in the process of finishing an Excel application which is designed to help water authorities analyse the costs and implications of building new infrastructure for water supply and sewerage.

The application was originally meant to be just for my own use as I needed to perform an analysis for a project I am working on for a local (UK) council. However, now that I've finished it I believe it would be useful for other people carrying out similar work and so I was thinking of possibly selling it.

So, I have several questions:

1) Do I own the copyright on the actual application? I understand that MS own the copyright on Excel but what about any applications that are written in it? As far as I know the copyright on the actual application should automatically belong to the person who wrote it. Is this correct?

2) Do I need to register the copyright somewhere to make it official?

3) Can I legally sell the application, without infringing MS Excel copyright?

4) To make sure it is clear I own the program code, I was thinking of having a dialog box appear whenever the app. is opened. It would say something simple, such as "Copyright TheRobster 2004. All rights reserved." Would this be enough to cover myself from a legal stand-point if someone tried to steal/sell the app.?

I am in the UK so I don't know if UK law is different from other countries regarding this matter or whether it is the same world-wide.

Many thanks
-Rob

1. Yes, you own the copyright on anything you write for Excel, either as an add-in,
   dll, automation exe,etc. but you need to be careful with Excel. You need to
   acknowledge MS' copyright and you can not use their icons, etc.
2. Different countries have different laws. Here in the USA we have
   copyright laws that are easy to get from http://www.copyright.gov/
3. Yes.
4. Probably not enough. Add an EULA at the installation like you see with all
   program installations.

Dont forget to trademark your program at a
minimum.


HTH

Sell your program pursuant to a signed agreement, not click or shrink wrap, prepared by a knowledgable intellectual property lawyer. A deep pocket will wear you out, if they want the program.

I'd include VBA security features, encryption, password locked cells, etc, which a ordinary user or Excel guru would not be able to crack.

If it's worth selling, it's worth protecting before someone reverse engineers it. Look what Microsoft did with Applie's GUI, which Apple did with Xerox's(?) GUI.