CISSP Practice Question – Legal & Compliance

A company discovers that a competitor has copied portions of its proprietary source code into a commercial product. Senior management asks the security manager if the company is protected even though the code was never formally registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Which of the following is the BEST response?

A. No, copyright protection requires formal registration before it applies.

B. Yes, the company owns copyright automatically once the code was created, but registration is required to pursue statutory damages in court.

C. No, the company must have registered the code as a trade secret before enforcement is possible.

D. Yes, but only if the company also filed for a patent covering the code’s algorithms.

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