Patents cover the underlying methodologies embodied in a given piece of software, or the function that the software is intended to serve, independent of the particular language or code that the software is written in. Copyright prevents the direct copying of some or all of a particular version of a given piece of software, but does not prevent other authors from writing their own embodiments of the underlying methodologies. Assuming a dataset meets certain criteria, copyright can also be used to prevent a given set of data from being copied while still allowing the author to keep the contents of said set of data a trade secret.
Patents cover the underlying methodologies embodied in a given piece of software, or the function that the software is intended to serve, independent of the particular language or code that the software is written in. Copyright prevents the direct copying of some or all of a particular version of a given piece of software, but does not prevent other authors from writing their own embodiments of the underlying methodologies. Assuming a dataset meets certain criteria, copyright can also be used to prevent a given set of data from being copied while still allowing the author to keep the contents of said set of data a trade secret