Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:14086 comp.sys.mac:14768 comp.sys.apple:5141
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!uw-entropy!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Copyrighting Icons
Message-ID: <1522@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 4 Apr 88 18:40:46 GMT
References: <24@imspw6.UUCP>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 25

A lot of people think that small icons should be copyrightable. If your icons
are, say, 16 * 16, then there are 65,000 possible icons. Anyone can simply
copyright all combinations, and then prevent anyone else from using
*any* 16*16 icons. This is obviously ludicrous.

How many different ways can you make a trashcan, or an arrow, in a small
dot matrix and not have them look similar? I don't believe there is a
significant amount of creativity involved here.

The same principle applies to using the mouse to bring up menus. Once you
decide that the mouse will be used to bring up menus, how many different
permutations are there? Let's see, there is pop-in, pull-down, slide-right,
hmm, ... If these were copyrightable, soon all the easy ones would be
copyrighted. New software, in their efforts to find a 'different' method,
would have to use ever more complicated methods.

How would consumers react if all auto makers used a different 'look and
feel' to how their automobile controls worked? Say, GM has the gas pedal
on the left and Ford has it on the right. Toyota, to avoid lawsuits, uses
a hand control. Ad absurdum.

Ideas are not copyrightable, only implementations are.

I prefer the older working definition of copyrights on software: The source
code and the binaries are copyrightable, the behavior isn't.