I've searched various forums which often talk about writing up "how to" guides and their implications as far as copyrights go. The part of copyright that i'm not understanding is that we have microsoft office which is copyrighted but we also have open office and in my opinion, they are almost completely identical. The other observation is with textbooks that are very similar but each separate product is copyrighted and does not infringe on the other authors rights?
How is difference measured and when can a similar product be produced because i would like to create a piece of software that performs a similar task as another but perhaps implement the idea in a better way.
Thanks in advance
Clint

