Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@aramis.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.sys.att Subject: Re: MKS Toolkit/UNIX [r] System, SEA ARC/PKARC, ... Keywords: AT&T, lawsuit, CSS, PC/Tools, PC/VI Message-ID: Date: 1 Jul 88 18:01:09 GMT References: <403@mancol.UUCP> <102@dcs.UUCP> <395@hotlr.ATT> <109@dcs.UUCP> <482@mks.UUCP> <1624@hoqax.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 19 Look and feel isn't as general as you're implying. In general, all people copyright is their actual code. If you're tricky, you may be able to patent the actual function that is being done, so that somebody could reimplement it and still be covered. (This is normally done only for applications that involve special-purpose hardware, but there is sometimes a way of describing what looks to most of us like software as a piece of hardware that happens to contain a memory that is running this program. You'd have to talk to a lawyer to figure out how far this can really be pushed.) But patents are a pain to deal with and this isn't often done. The look and feel stuff is normally done by copyrighting the thing as an audio-visual work. This means in effect that it is being treated as a work of art and you're copyrighting the displays. I think this is highly questionable even for the cases where it is being tried, but I've never heard of anyone trying it with a standard Unix utility, which isn't display-oriented. And even if you succeeded, somebody could produce something that did the same thing and had a different display format. As far as I know, nobody has yet produced a legal theory under which the behavior, as contrasted with the code, of a Unix utility can be protected.