torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie) (03/15/91)
rjc@geech.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes: >Apple has no copyright on 'look and feel.' It's an impossible concept. Tell that to Paperback software and Adam Osborne. > Look. If you invented the automobile, it's perfectly ok for me >to make a machine that performs the same functions exactly, as long >as I don't steal your blue prints, disassemble your engine to find >out how it works. Does the above apply to books and written works though? There have been cases where authors have been sued for breach of copyright for writing a novel which based its storyline on some other author's popular work. Names, scenes, characters changed, but courts have ruled that the "look and feel" [my words, not the court's] of the novel was substantially the same. I remember reading a case about this 3 or so years ago, but I can't for the life of me remember who or what the novel was. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Evan Torrie. Stanford University, Class of 199? torrie@cs.stanford.edu "If it weren't for your gumboots, where would you be? You'd be in the hospital, or in-firm-ary..." F. Dagg