Question 1: Can KidSoft take legal action against FunSoft under the copyright law of Hong Kong? Explain.

Question 2: Would your answer to (1) differ, and if so, how, if FunCal was developed by FunSoft's software development centre in Shenzhen and the Chinese manuals were all translated and printed in China?

KidSoft Ltd is the owner of "KidCal", a program for assisting young children in learning Mathematics. Despite its success, the program only caters for English- speaking children and does not support the Chinese language. FunSoft Ltd is a software firm specializing in Chinese software. In view of the popularity of KidCal, FunSoft had approached KidSoft for an exclusive licence to develop a bilingual version of KidCal supporting both Chinese and English. Negotiations between the two companies had gone on for more than a year but eventually broke down. Frustrated by the outcome of the negotiations, FunSoft decided to develop a bilingual version of KidCal on its own. It instructed its programmers to undertake the development, adding new features to the program and re- designing its user interface. The final program, named "FunCal", was completed within six months. FunCal functions in exactly the same ways as KidCal and supports both Chinese and English. FunCal's user interface, however, is very different from that of KidCal. FunCal was an immediate hit in Hong Kong. Suspicious of what had taken place, KidSoft hired a private investigator and obtained a copy of FunCal's source code. KidSoft has discovered that except for those modules relating to the user interface and the new features of FunCal, the other modules in FunCal all look very similar to their counterparts in KidCal. In particular, FunCal has adopted KidCal's special method of keeping track of a child's progress in learning Mathematics. KidSoft has also found that a major portion of FunCal's Chinese manuals appears to be directly translated from KidCal's manuals