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Patent law and copyright law have very little to do with each other. Patent law covers inventions - ideas, basically - whereas copyright covers concrete works - text of a story, the storyline itself, the characters, software source code.
That is correct and it backs up my point: usage rights, beyond public performance and display, are covered by patent law, not copyright law.
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There are no circumstances where a single thing can be covered by both copyright and a patent, although a copyrighted work may make use of patented ideas.
Precisely: a work can be under copyright and also involve patent law because it makes use of a patented idea. By itself, the work certainly is not patented, but the idea it implements (or expresses) may be patented.
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When you buy a book, you buy the paper (the real and tangible medium), as well as this particular copy of the text (intangible). You don't buy the intellectual property of the text, which is always the creator's and cannot be transferred.
Whereas now, when you buy software, you own the CD/DVD/whatever (unless it's distributed online), but you don't actually own the copy of the software on the medium, which is why the software company can require you to agree to the EULA before using the software.
Of course, this is my interpretation under Austrian law, and other countries may differ in details.
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal opinion, but I think that the cause and effect is reversed: you do not actually own the copy of the software on the medium because you agreed to a EULA that is actually a contract. Your payment for the software is the consideration, your opening of the package (or clicking agree, etc) is the acceptance.
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But since I actually own my copy of the text, nothing can make me sign the EULA, so I can read the text all I like.
Now, could an author not shrink wrap a book and require that you agree to a contract before reading it? I think that this is possible, though it would take a rather eccentric author/publisher to do this. However, if this is the case, then there is nothing different between books and software in this respect. It so happens that software companies include a contract, but book publishers do not. The reasons for this would be historical, and also because software often makes use of ideas that are patented, thus the contract must grant a patent license for the use of the software.