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From: jas@ISI.EDU (Jeff Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: look and feel (was Re: Open Letter to an MS-DOS User)
Message-ID: <17454@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 91 21:57:54 GMT
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In-reply-to: mbrown@testsys.austin.ibm.com's message of 4 Apr 91 15:51:56 GMT

In article <6400@awdprime.UUCP> mbrown@testsys.austin.ibm.com (Mark Brown) writes:

>In article <91MAR30.004457@ducvax.auburn.edu> wadew@ducvax.auburn.edu writes:
>|Why are you mad about Apple's look and feel lawsuit?  It's just trying to 
>|protect that which sets Macintosh apart (and to many, makes it better).
>
>Easy. Here's an example you can understand....
>
>There are only so many ways one can ask for entry of name, address, phone #.
>When all of those ways are "look and feel" copyrighted, no-one else will
>be able to write a new program that wants that information.
>
>*That's* what look and feel leads to.
>
>Mark Brown
>MAIL: mbrown@testsys.austin.ibm.com OR uunet!testsys.austin.ibm.com!mbrown
>	      Which came first: The Chicken or the Legba?
>    DISCLAIMER: Any personal opinions stated here are just that.

Faulty reasoning.  We're not talking about the layout of data on a
page; more like the layout of a form with borders, text styles, etc.
And that form *is* copyrightable (or patentable).  Because I create a
awesomely better form for entering personal finance information, does
that mean that since everyone should benefit from better financial
structure that I don't have the right to protect my research and
development?

Does it seem fair that people could take my form, change the color of
the ink, or the thickness of the borders, and sell it?

Doesn't seem so right to me.


jas
--
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Jeffrey A. Sullivan		| Senior Systems Programmer
jas@venera.isi.edu		| Information Sciences Institute
jas@isi.edu                    	| University of Southern California