doug@eris (Doug Merritt) (03/26/88)
In article <249@sdti.UUCP> mjy@sdti.UUCP (0000-Michael J. Young) writes: >First of all, even though the initial technology on which the Macintosh >user interface is based was developed by Xerox, Apple has certainly added >much to it. In fact, they've added enough to be granted multiple >copyrights. It doesn't necessarily work that way. Copyright law protects derivitives of a work as well as the original. If I write a book and copyright it, then if someone "improves" it by rewriting it into a screenplay, I still own the screenplay, despite their improvements. If someone translates my book into Swahili, I am still protected, and the Swahili version is still copyright by me since it is derived from my work. The fuzzy legal questions have to do with things like, how similar does something have to be in order to be considered to be derivitive? The law is moderately straightforward, but much is left to interpretation (read: lawyers having a field day in court). Usually it is decided based on things like whether access to the original work can be proven, testimony by expert witnesses, the whim of the jury, etc. More important than any of the above: someone recently said that Apple licensed the user interface technology from Xerox. If this is true, (does anyone know for sure one way or the other???), then much of what is being argued on the net recently is irrelevent, since it then follows that Apple bought the right to creative derivations from Xerox's original work, but others perhaps did not. Then Apple's case would have a certain amount of merit, and the legal arguments in court would get interesting and likely take a long, long time. If Apple did *not* license the technology from Xerox, then they're really just making trouble, because A) Xerox could and should claim infringement by Apple, but B) since they have not done so previously, it would be argued that Xerox gave up right to protection by not protecting their property (an important part of the law, btw), and therefore C) Xerox's work becomes public domain, which D) makes Apple's stuff a derivitive of a public domain work. (These arguments would presumably be made by amicus curae, "friend of the court", i.e. knowledgeable parties not directly involved in the suit who nonetheless would like to throw their two cents in to try to sway the court in a favorable direction; Commodore and Atari might fit in here, for instance.) Now, derivitives of public domain works *can* be claimed as copyrighted works (so long as significant improvements were made), but then HP et al would have a strong case of claiming that they, too, derived their stuff from the public domain Xerox works rather than from Apple's proprietary work. Then the question would be: does HP's stuff look more like Apple's or Xerox's??? > >Second, HP must have felt that the copyrights were valid, because they >requested a license from Apple. Then they went ahead and violated the >copyright after a license was denied. They then publicly described the >product as conforming to the copyrighted 'look and feel'. I'm not a >lawyer or judge, but if I saw this kind of blatant disregard for a >copyright, I'd be inclined to award damages. Maybe...but HP could claim that they tried to license what they regarded as an invalid copyright just to avoid trouble (the "prudence" in "jurisprudence"?), but that Apple is engaging in unfair marketing practices. Etc. Lawyers will have fun with this one. Note finally that courts typically avoid setting precedents when possible, because if a lower court tries to set a precedent on an important subject, then a higher court may well reverse the decision, which makes the judge on the first court look bad...can ruin a career. Therefore the novel aspects of copyright protection of "look and feel" are unlikely to be the central focus of the case unless and until it reaches a high court. Unless some judge is really feeling cocky... The above interpretations are my personal opinions, are offered on a speculative basis, and should not be construed as legal advice. Doug Merritt doug@eris.berkeley.edu or ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug