The register interface of a VGA card was copyright IBM 1989, but that wasn't the question. The question was whether the fundamental operation of a von Neumann

The register interface of a VGA card was copyright IBM 1989, but that wasn't the question. The question was whether the fundamental operation of a von Neumann machine was copyrightable. No, it isn't. That's just an idea, not a specific expression. An example I grew up with was convincing a VGA adapter to go into 320x240 mode. That was a rather clever hack. The original source code to do it was copyrightable. He published it in Dr. Dobb's journal in 1991 and then later in his own book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X