A court views intellectual property as just that property.

I have never had a customer walk in and say hey could you come over to my house and bang out some scripts for to control my theater system?

They come in and ask you how much would it be for me to hit just watch movie and have everything turn on, lights dim, shades close ect.

Customers are shopping for and buying solutions to their needs. Not the tools to provide those solutions.

If a customer walk in and asks me how much to hang a flat panel over his fireplace I don't quote him $400 and then leave my tools there in case he ever wants to throw a new TV up.

People that under value knowledge are usually the same people that lack it to begin with.

As for Julie's original gripe I would think that your question would be more suited to Crestron or AMX themselves as to why they feel proprietary programming and editing is required to program their systems. And they will probably tell you their equipment is designed and sold to be professionally installed and programmed.

And who can see this scenario unfolding. Customer Jones calls "yeah I need the programming for my crestron system. Bobby Joe from Geek squad is here to put in my new Westinghouse LCD"
you send him the code
2 days later the phone rings yeah well now nothing is working and the guy working on it says it's because of the way you initially programmed it.