Law Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for legal professionals, students, and others with experience or interest in law. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I see this in many Android devices, the picture below:
So, if Apple or a new technology company uses not exactly that method but similar in any way of alerting a user from high volume listening.
Can a New Company or Apple have the right to alert users?
No.
There is no originality in that alert, hence no copyright. Everyone can use it.
A program which alerts the user when they expose themselves to loud noises which might damage their hearing is an invention.
You can have copyright on a specific implementation of an invention. The images used in that alert, the exact sourcecode of that particular application and maybe even that exact text might qualify for copyright.
But copyright doesn't apply to the invention - the basic idea - itself. Copyright does not prevent another party from copying an invention, as long as they don't plagiarize the implementation.
However, it might be possible to patent that invention. Patent right is a completely different category of intellectual property than copyright. Filing a patent is far more expensive and requires a lot more paperwork than registering copyright (which is optional anyway), has a much lower protection duration than copyright and can be challenged if someone can prove that the idea isn't actually new ("prior art").
