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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed Judge Gilstrap's ruling in SAS Institute, Inc. v. World Programming Limited, which effectively denied copyright protection to SAS Institute's data analysis software. "1 Adopting a burden shifting framework, the district court found that while SAS had carried its initial burden on copyrightability, WPL had shifted the burden back to SAS by proffering evidence that some material within the copyrighted work was unprotectable, e.g., SAS 76, open-source software, etc. Because SAS failed to rebut this evidence, or "affirmatively show[] some elements of the work to be protectable," the district court reasoned, SAS's claims could not proceed to trial and were dismissed. THE DISSENT The dissent characterized the majority's decision as a "far-reaching change" that "departs from the long-established precedent and practice of copyrightability of computer programs" because the district court Sam Eichner, an attorney with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, may be contacted at [email protected]. improperly relied on burden of proof issues instead of analyzing the selection, coordination and arrangement of the various elements of the SAS.