protected. The position was further upheld in the SAS Institute case involving a set of
computer programs for statistical analysis. It was held elements of the computer
program such as algorithms or commands could not be protected however all those
elements taken together could if they reflect the author’s own intellectual creation, ‘the
keywords, syntax, commands and combinations of commands, options, defaults and
iterations consist of words, figures or mathematical concepts which, considered in
isolation, are not, as such, an intellectual creation of the author of the computer
program. It is only through the choice, sequence and combination of those words,
figures or mathematical concepts that the author may express his creativity in an
original manner and achieve a result, namely the user manual for the computer program,
which is an intellectual creation. The AG explained copyright protection is based on
creativity and inventiveness not labour, ‘He opined the author’s own intellectual
creation involves creativity, skill and inventiveness, though the merit, qualitative or
aesthetic, of the subject-matter is not relevant… For a computer program to be
copyright, "account should be taken not of the time and work devoted to devising the
program nor of the level of skill of its author but of the degree of originality of its
writing
.
The intellectual creation standard was again discussed in the Painer case. The
case concerned a school portrait photograph of Natascha K taken before she was
abducted in 1998. When she escaped her abductor in 2006 various media outlets used
the photographs without attributing them to Ms Painer. The court held the photographs
were original and clarified the intellectual creation standard. The court stated a work