[GrandMasterBirt]

That's more about patents.

Patent is a technique to convert A => B

Copyright is work done such as a single tool A => B. Copyright does not apply to all instances of tools A => B as long as none of those tools copied anything from the original copyrighted tool.

If you take the copyrighted tool and you transform it to something else using something you made or got, the work is not yours since you created a tool A => B completely based on the original copyrighted tool. The law is flimsy here and you would probably have to just go to court to settle it, this is not black and white.