I think that’s right, and that’s basically how the Fed Cir looked at it (and why the framing of this case as a copyrightability question scares me) -because the question isn’t whether the character is copyrightable. The question is whether others can use those functions in service of creating a compiler with the same programming language – something that doesn’t come up with literary characters.

Thanks – I look forward to the amici briefs in this case. I suppose that even a literary character could be built as the sum of methods of operation (i.e. characteristic ways of acting) and be protected by copyright – as long as the sum, at some level of abstraction, could be translated into distinctively delineated, specific, non-general characteristics that courts require in order to afford copyright protection to fictional characters. Such characteristics would then characterize the character’s conduct even when the character would act in other situations—in a different work.