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From: raveling@vaxa.isi.edu (Paul Raveling)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.apple,comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Apple challenges MS-Windows, et.al.
Message-ID: <5147@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 28 Mar 88 17:28:18 GMT
References: <2543@charon.unm.edu> <5134@venera.isi.edu>
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Reply-To: raveling@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Paul Raveling)
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute
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	[I apologize for the long article -- Tried to send this
	as a mail reply to Brad Templeton, but an having trouble
	with bouncing addresses]


	---------------------------------------------------------

	Regarding your comments.....

Your analogy is incorrect.  The media that books use coorespond to
floppy disks, file formats etc. in software.

Stories, on the other hand, do have copyrights on character's descriptions,
powers, special features, personalities, and to a lesser extent on plots,
theme ideas, settings etc.

There are numerous precedents for this.


	This is a good point for discussion.  I believe it's one
	of those areas where the truth is that neither view is entirely
	correct.  It's something like the case in physics of demonstrating
	that black and white are special, and very rare, cases of
	shades of gray.

	My argument would be something to the effect that copyrightable
	should be the semantic content, rather than the form or mode of
	expression, of any copyrightable entity.

	How about this analogy:  Baseball game broadcasts are copyrighted.
	What they actually copyright is the description of a specific
	game.  They don't protect, for example, the ability of an
	announcer to speak rather than to sing, or the ability to display
	an image magnified by use of a telephoto zoom lens.


	A small example of software content would be the semantics of
	a menu, rather than its appearance, mode of creation/deletion,
	or mode of entry selection.  

	Probably the best illustration of this difference is our
	project's software, applying AI to the user interface.  The
	application defines a knowledge base including, for example,
	the inforation that a "situation display" for a naval briefing
	requires qualification to choose one of five geographic areas
	or one or more of perhaps 300 ships.  The user interface
	reasons automatically that the best way to select this
	qualification is to offer the user a multiple-choice menu
	for the small number of regions and a text field available
	for typing the names of ships.  It creates the input request
	form as a popup, and chooses its format to suit the inforation
	needed.  This information can vary at any given moment as
	a function of curren context in the application domain.

	On a purely output level, our user interface software chooses
	dynamically how to present information.  For example, if the
	user wants to see what ships are not ready for combat, the
	user interface may either highlight icons on a map, format
	a table of readiness information, or generate a natural language
	summary.  Again, its decisions depend on the current dialog context.


	I think there's no doubt that the application contents
	should be copyrightable.  To our UIMS, the application
	semantics are defined only in a knowledge base.  The modes
	interaction are based on dynamic reasoning, and are not
	fully defined until their use.


	Then there's the counterexample of an application such as
	emacs, where the application and its user interface are
	virtually identical.  I'd still argue that an onscreen
	editor's modes of interaction should be uncopyrightable,
	but that the instantiation of them in a particular editor
	should be.  This gets into a VERY murky shade of gray.


	I'm aware of at least some of the legal precedents, but
	believe that application to the look and feel of software
	should be invalid and deserves more careful judicial review.


---------------------
Paul Raveling
Raveling@vaxa.isi.edu