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From: torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Copyrights (was Re: Mac and Amiga (Games--Macintosh vs A500))
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.093615.16838@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 15 Mar 91 09:36:15 GMT
References: <7816@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <1991Mar14.052507.19830@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <7906@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <1991Mar14.233243.29563@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: torrie@neon.Stanford.EDU (Evan James Torrie)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Ca , USA
Lines: 24

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