Software Copyright Protection in Global Law: A Comparative Analysis of International Frameworks, US, EU, and Indian Approaches

ABSTRACT
Few areas of intellectual property law have demanded as much adaptation as software copyright. Over the past four decades, legal systems have wrestled with a consequential question: how do you protect something that is simultaneously a creative expression and a functional tool? This paper examines the international treaty architecture governing software copyright and compares how three major jurisdictions—the United States, the European Union, and India—have translated those obligations into domestic law.
Drawing on the Berne Convention, the TRIPS Agreement, and the WIPO Copyright Treaty, alongside statutes and judicial decisions from all three jurisdictions, the paper finds that treaty-level harmonisation has created a coherent baseline—treating software as a literary work—but that national implementation remains fragmented. The US has developed a flexible doctrine of transformative fair use; the EU maintains strict expression-only protection under Directive 2009/24/EC; and India balances proprietary rights with access considerations under its Copyright Act of 1957. Shared challenges—digital piracy, open-source licensing conflicts, and AI-generated code—cut across all three systems. The paper concludes with reform recommendations: hybrid sui generis protections for software interfaces, updated interoperability guidelines, and stronger cross-border enforcement.