gary@ctc.contel.com (Gary Bisaga x4219) (05/07/90)
Blair M. Burtan <bear@bu-pub.bu.edu> writes: >Can you imagine Ford Motor Corp. in a law suit against every other >automobile manufacturer because their products have the >look and/or feel of a car. Give me a frigging break. ... Yes. It, or something like it, happens. A few days ago I saw an article in the paper (Wash. Post) about how architects are copyrighting, and successfully defending in court, parts of their building designs. I am not talking about copying blueprints and directly making a house copy, or even looking at the house from the outside and directly copying. There were pictures of two houses in the paper, the "original" and the "copy." Maybe I'm just blind to the subtleties of architectural design, but they sure didn't look the same. And not just ornamentationally. They had different overall configurations, different roofs, doorways in different places as well as different in number, etc. They said the *homeowners* had to pay the architect of the original house of which their house was a "carbon copy" something like $60,000! Then these people were interviewed by the reporter and they sounded apologetic because their architect made such a close copy of another house! All I can say is that I hope the people who invented the colonial-style house and the attached garage never resurface -- I can't afford $120,000. > "Mathematicians stand on eaach other's shoulder, > Computer Scientists stand on each other's toes." No, you mean "Lawyers and beancounters from companies where computer scientists work stand on each other's toes." Gary Bisaga (gary@ctc.contel.com)