hal@gvax.UUCP (02/12/87)
In article <17300@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Emile LeBlanc writes: > > I was wondering if there has been any consideration of the possible >problem that MINIX has the 'look and feel' of another well known >operating system. I have read recently that there are some companies >that are suing other software companies for producing code that has a >similar interface as the suing companies code even though the internals >were written completely from scratch. I'm going to try to be a spoilsport by sending the followups to this to misc.legal, where the discussion belongs and where it is apparently getting started. I've also posted this to rec.arts.books because of the topic and book review at the end, but no followups to there, please. The "look and feel" issue is a big one and is the subject of an important pending lawsuit involving Lotus and one of the 1-2-3 clonemakers. The question is the extent to which a company can protect its user interface. For example, many video games are protected by copyright. (Actually these are treated as copyrights on audiovisual works where the infringement is obvious, sidestepping the problems of software copyright.) But one certainly cannot copyright the "look and feel" of the pedals and steering wheel of a car's "user interface". Where pop-up and pull-down menus, spreadsheets, and other things fall is an open question (which is why there is a major lawsuit pending). There are also anti-trust implications if a copyright or patent is used to block entry of other firms into a market. Lotus and the clone crowd have hired lots of good lawyers, who don't agree of course, and the courts will eventually tell us something about what can be copyrighted and what cannot. These are things us non-lawyers will not be able to resolve here, so lets not try. Copyright law is a strange thing where common sense does not always yield the equitable answer, much less the one the courts actually decide (sorry--couldn't resist the cheap shot). I suggest that anyone who is interested read "The Copyright Book" by William S. Strong (MIT press, 2nd edition 1984, paperback edition 1986). This is a very well written book that discusses copyright primarily from the standpoint of the creator of copyrightable works (i.e. authors and artists will also find this very useful). Stone has good coverage of the issues involved in software copyrights. Much of the time, however, he points out that the law is not clear since there are ambiguities and unanswered questions in the 1978 statute creating software copyrights, and there is little case law yet to clarify many important points. Stone's book is no substitute for real legal advice, but if half of the amateur lawyers and copyright police on the net would read it before posting, we could be saved from lots of worthless advice, speculation, and debate. Hal Perkins Cornell Computer Science