Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:13841 comp.sys.hp:626 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!amdahl!rtech!brent From: brent@rtech.UUCP (Brent Williams) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.hp Subject: Re: Trial by JURY Message-ID: <1886@rtech.UUCP> Date: 29 Mar 88 05:50:13 GMT References: <2722@tekigm2.TEK.COM> Organization: Relational Technology Inc. Alameda, CA 94501 Lines: 76 From article <2722@tekigm2.TEK.COM>, by timothym@tekigm2.TEK.COM (Timothy D Margeson): > Now, add to this trial by jury a small, helpless company like Apple, being ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Come on. The quarter just ended, apple announced $1 billion in revenue. I bet Hewlett Packard is only about $6-8 billion per year, not that much bigger than Apple. Also, microsoft only about $300 million. They might try to capitalize on the "2 guys in a garage image" but an attorney for the other guys would have no trouble pulling this apart. > robbed of it's profits by the GIANTs MicroSoft, Hewlett Packard (and just > think if IBM were invovled). Oh, that poor Apple (say's the jury). > > So, you can be sure Apple will want momma joe, a farmers wife from Froth, > Kentucky on the jury, but not tom, a computer literate from Houston, Texas. > Be sure, Apple WILL be able to select the jury, or at least deny ANY of those > possible jury members whom might understand the real differences they should > be looking for in a copyright case. Recent changes to peremptory challenges only permit a fixed number of peremptory challenges per side. Thus, out of 20 possible jurors, they may only be able to bounce 8 for non-legal related reasons. (I don't know the numbers, but they're not as lenient as they used to be.) > > Apple probable will win this case, but even if they don't, they can then use Not bloody likely. > the case as a precent and copy like hell anything they want. So, it's a win > win, case for Apple, and lose lose for HP and MS. IBM too for that matter. > A third benefit from the case, win or lose, is that Apple will slow down any > developement of Presentation Manager, 3rt party Windows applications and the > like. Presentation manager doesn't need anybody else to slow it down; they seem to be perfectly able to shoot themselves in the foot. Besides, all the spate of idiotic jury decisions means that the *REAL* court decisions are made by an appellate court, usually a panel of 3 old, crusty judges that are a lot harder to hoodwink than a bunch of jurors. I've heard that about 95% of the $1million plus damage awards are reversed on appeal. > > Apple is not being dumb by any means. Also remember they won a similar suit > against Digital Research. SO a precent in Apples favor already exists. Another They did not win any such suit. Their suit was settled out of court. Therefore, no precedent was established. Precedent only arises from a decision. > case, similar to this, was Microstuff (Crosstalk) vs. Mirror (a Crosstalk > clone). Microstuff won on the look and feel aspects of the case, lost on the > aspects. So Mirror was changed so that the screens didn't look like Crosstalks, But this was because Mirror was an *exact* clone of crosstalk, and because Mirror advocated openly in their advertising that they were a REPLACEMENT for Crosstalk. Not that they had a product embodying many of the same features, but an EXACT interchangeable replacement. Nowhere does Microsoft or HP come even close to spouting the same thing. > but everything else worked the same. Including the script language. Yes. This moves them back from being a "copycat" to being "compatible". Besides, the suit only covered the screen layout. Programming languages can't be copyrighted. Look at all the trouble Postscript got themselves into because they started calling Postscript a programming language, in their own manuals. You can't use the name but you can write a compatible language. They won the battle but lose the war. -- -brent williams Relational Technology, Inc. 1080 Marina Village Parkway {amdahl,sun,mtxinu,cpsc6a,hoptoad} Alameda, CA 94501 !rtech!brent (415)-769-1400