Source code could
potentially be a trade secret for a software company, but in order to qualify
for protection it would have to be actively guarded and not disclosed to anyone
outside of the company. Trade secret protection is really for something like a
secret recipe that has great value to the company solely because it is a secret
known only by the company.
A copyright is thebetter form of
protection for software. As far as understanding what has been
copyrighted — copyrights exist as soon as the work is fixed in a medium. So,
any work (here, software) that you see has an implicit copyright on the
original aspects of the work. The question of what parts of the work are
original and thus protected by the copyright is a legal question that should be
answered by an Intellectual Property Lawyers.
For that reason most
companies will have copyrights on their software to some extent. Patents on
software are more difficult to obtain than copyrights for a couple of reasons.
First, the patent application process requires a strict review to ensure that
the application meets the requirements — as opposed to a copyright which exists
as soon as an author puts pen to paper. Second, patents are generally reserved
for tangible inventions. It is possible that software can qualify for a patent,
but it is much harder to show.
