question about copyright and code, is this legal?

[Patrik Stridvall]

> Say I have a piece of code, x (which is copyright) which 
> always returns the 
> same output for a given input (e.g. a function that implements a math 
> formula or a function that retrieves some value from an 
> internal data table 
> stored in the dll or whatever)
> Lets then say that I havent seen this code (either origonal C code or 
> disassembly)
> Say I was to write a program that calls this function for all 
> valid inputs 
> and prints the inputs and outputs.
> If I was to take the output of this program and, without 
> refering to the 
> origonal function or the dump program in any way (i.e. using just the 
> "truth table" for the function) generate a function that, for 
> any given 
> input, generates the same output as the original, have I 
> broken the law?

Short answer:
In depends on the nature of the output data and in
which country you are in.

Long answer:
If the output data for each input data is not mearly a
pure statement of some facts but an unique expression about
something (be it some facts or otherwise) it is not permitted
in any country. 

Note however that in some cases it might be possible to
apply some another function and get rid of the unique
expression and merely get the pure fact though...
However in some countries it still depends on the nature
of the pure facts though.

In the US, it doesn't matter at all, see the "Feist" decision.

In the Commonwealth countries and some other countries
including my home country Sweden, each fact in and of
itself is not protected either, however large collections
of facts have some sort of protection as a whole and to
some lesser degree to subsets of the whole collection.

This is in order to protect the effort of collecting the
facts and while case laws AFAIR at least in Sweden is
a little unclear, it mostly seems to apply to collections
of facts that have required a significant effort to collect...

So functions the produce results that are purely algoritmic
in nature are not protected.

As far as Wine is concerned though I can't think of
any Windows API that:
1. Returns pure facts (not having any unique expression) 
2. Would fulfill the requirement of needed a significant
   effort to collect to collect the fact.

So no I wouldn't worry about it as far as Wine is concerned.