Can software be protected by copyright?

As defined by the Copyright Act, a computer program is any set of instructions used by a computer to bring about a specific result. While the question of whether a software program could be protected by copyright law used to be a tricky question, the law is now settled on the fact that software is entitled to copyright protection as a literary work. However, there are still some issues regarding how much of a program can actually be protected. While the literal code of the program can be protected, things are stickier with the code’s structure, sequence and organization. Some courts have said this is protectable while others have said it is not (because such protection would result in protecting the underlying ideas embodied in the code, and ideas cannot be copyrighted).