t of public
             knowledge or of general knowledge in the trade or business, a court
             will allow a trade secret to be used by someone who discovered or
             developed the trade secret independently or if the holder does not
             take adequate precautions to protect the secret.
             In 1964 the United States Copyright Office began to register
             software as a form of literary expression. The office based its
             decision on White-Smith Music Co. v. Apollo , where the Supreme Court
             determined that a piano roll used in a player piano did not infringe
             upon copyrighted music because the roll was part of a mechanical
             device. Since a computer program is textual, like a book, yet also
             mechanical, like the piano roll in White-Smith, the Copyright Office
             granted copyright protection under the rule of doubt.
             In 1974, Congress created the Natural Commission on New
             Technological Uses (CONTU) to investigate whether the evolving
             computer technology field outpaced the existing copyright laws and
             also to determine the extent of copyright protection for computer
             programs. CONTU concluded that while copyright protection should
             extend beyond the literal source code of a computer program, evolving
             case law should determine the extent of protection. The commission
             also felt copyright was the best alternative among existing
             intellectual property protective mechanisms, and CONTU rejected trade
             secret and patents as viable protective mechanisms. The CONTU report
             resulted in the 1980 Computer Software Act, and the report acts as
             informal legislative history to aid the courts in interpreting the
             In 1980 The Copyright Act was amended to explicitly include
             computer programs. Title 17 to the United States Code states that it
             is illegal to make or to distribute copies of copyrighted material
             without authorization, except for the user's right to make a single
             backup copy for archival pur...