This depends on whether the other party has the authorization to make modifications. If so, it can be re-developed, but it still cannot own the copyright of the re-developed software.
Here is a case:
I recently encountered a case that I thought was interesting and I would like to share it with you.
Case description: Company A purchased the copyrighted computer software M from Company B. After using it for several years, it needed to be upgraded, so it found Company C, which was established outside the company after the technical staff of the original Company B left their jobs. , signed a software upgrade and development contract, and Company C carried out secondary development of software M. After Company B found out, it sued Company C for infringement. Company C claimed that Company A legally owned the M software and had the right to secondary development in accordance with the "Computer Software Protection Regulations" defense.
The point of view is: In this case, Company C infringed upon Company A’s right to modify the software copyright.
The legal provisions cited by Company C's lawyer for defense are as follows - the provisions of the Computer Software Protection Regulations of 2002:
Article 16 The owner of legal copies of software shall have the following rights:< /p>
(1) Install the software into computers and other devices with information processing capabilities according to the needs of use;
(2) Make backup copies to prevent damage to the copies. These backup copies shall not be provided to others for use in any way, and the owner shall be responsible for destroying the backup copies when the owner loses ownership of the legal copies;
(3) In order to use the software for actual use Make necessary modifications to the computer application environment or improve its functions and performance; however, unless otherwise agreed in the contract, the modified software shall not be provided to any third party without the permission of the software copyright owner.
In fact, when looking at a piece of legislation, one must carefully analyze the legal principles in it in order to correctly understand the intention of the legislation and thus the law. The legislative purpose of the Copyright Law and Software Protection Regulations is to encourage innovation and technological progress on the basis of "protecting" the legitimate rights of copyright holders. Their core is to promote technological progress through "protection." From this regulation, we can see that Company A does have the right to re-develop legally owned copies of M software, but it should be interpreted that this right is a restricted right, as can be seen from the law. , the owner of a legal copy of the software may make necessary modifications to the software. But it is obvious that this legal secondary development behavior has two constraints. The first is that the right belongs only to the owner of the legal copy of the software, and the second is that the secondary development behavior can only target the legal copy. conduct. The law does not stipulate that the right to modify can be sublicensed and used for diffusion, and this law itself provides necessary limited authorization to the owner of legal copies of the software outside the scope of copyright, so this authorization itself must be restrictive. , therefore no expanded legal interpretation can be made, which means that the person who performs necessary modifications to the software can only be the owner of the legal copy of the software.
Specifically in this case, Company A’s secondary development rights can and can only be implemented by Company A itself, and can and can only be used on copies of the M software that Company A has legally purchased and owned. The secondary development rights owned by Company A cannot be extended to third-party companies, so Company C’s behavior must have violated Company B’s right to modify the software.