jim@THRUSH.STANFORD.EDU (Jim Helman) (07/28/89)
That's the headline on the top of page 1 of the San Jose Mercury News business section today. It's an editorial by James Mitchell, the Merc's business editor. His main points are: 1) The judge is right on the points thrown out because they were already covered under licenses Apple had granted to Microsoft and HP 2) Most of the technology in dispute really came from Xerox PARC. 3) Apple should follow Xerox's lead and license rather than sue. [This way they probably could have got lots of $$$ for rights that weren't even legally valid -jlh] 4) Apple misled the media by distributing pictures of New Wave, after it had been set up to look as much like the Mac as possible, rather than comparing the default configurations. There are also some interesting statements from Fred Gibbons, president of Software Publishing, about "placing ... 'a shadow' over all software developers," and that "patents and copyrights shouldn't be allowed on basic inventions." One metaphor sounds very much like a statement which the newspaper published and attributed to RMS during the Lotus protest: "Imagine, for example, how tough it would be to drive if each automaker had a different place for the gas pedal and steering wheel." Jim Helman Department of Applied Physics P.O. Box 10494 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94309 (jim@thrush.stanford.edu) (415) 723-4940