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From: darryl@ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman)
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: <9589@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: 31 Mar 88 20:50:51 GMT
References: <2543@charon.unm.edu> <5134@venera.isi.edu>
Reply-To: darryl@ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman)
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica CA
Lines: 41

In article <5134@venera.isi.edu> raveling@vaxa.isi.edu (Paul Raveling) writes:
>In article <2543@charon.unm.edu> cs2531bn@unmc.UUCP (Lazlo Nibble) writes:
>>
>>Far too late for that already.  The courts have already decided that the "look
>>and feel" of a user interface CAN be copyrighted.  Remember the lawsuit that
>>Broderbund won over one of the Print Shop clones?
>>
>	Being able to copyright "look and feel" is a decision the
>	courts should reverse.
>
>	Original copyright law didn't prohibit paper (e.g., book)
>	publishers from using the same look and feel as an already-
>	copyrighted publication.  They could use the same graphic
>	styles, font styles, page layouts.  They could produce the
>	same "feel" by structuring the document for its intended use
>	(reference manual, tutorial, programmed instruction text,
>	novel, ...).

What you are having difficulty distinguishing (and you are certainly not
alone, because I'm not sure I understand it either) is that you may NOT
copyright an idea, merely an implementation.  And if the US were really
following the international copyright conventions, fonts would be copyrightable
also (they are in western europe, for example).  You have to get the owner's
permission to use them.  So, while a book, a table of contents, a glossary,
or an index, is an idea, which you can copy freely, a particular example
(say from some technical manual) is copyrightable as a literary work.

Also, the history of look and feel copyrights is an outgrowth of audiovisual
copyrights.  In my previous (long) article I included a successful suit
from 1948;  this is not the earliest one by far.  Copyright law WAS invented
to cover situations like this;  the problem is that no one seems to be able
to describe "like" very well.

>	Any attempt to restrict use of simimar "look and feel"
>	seriously threatens the ability of EVERYONE to provide
>	software, no matter how beneficial that software would be.

But the law is trying to balance this against what happens if there is no
protection against copying.  If you can clearly describe a line between
illegal copying and honest development, I would certainly like to hear it.

		--Darryl Richman