Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!gateway!RELAY.NSWC.NAVY.MIL!dsill From: dsill@RELAY.NSWC.NAVY.MIL ("David E. Sill") Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: look and feel Message-ID: Date: 14 Mar 89 18:53:03 GMT References: <37205@bbn.COM> Sender: news@bbn.COM Organization: BBN news/mail gateway Lines: 28 Well, I suppose some position, either good or bad, is better than none. But any lawyer will tell you that one decision does not provide overwhelming precedent. I don't think it's really that important which way the courts end up deciding the L&F issue; I think the end result either way is that there will be enough people upset with the outcome to mandate overhauling the software copyright laws. If Judge Daly's ruling holds, development will be stifled by the requirement that each new product line have its own unique interface. This is obviously contrary to the user's need for fewer and simpler interfaces, not to mention an extra burden on the developer who has to go out of his way to avoid making his product too much like his competitors. On the other hand, though, if developers are allowed to produce "clones" of software products without regard to the effort the original developer put into designing the interface, then there will be little incentive for the development of new interfaces. Imagine a company like Xerox spending millions of dollars on research to come up with the Window/Icon/Mouse interface only to have its competitors incorporate Xerox's innovations into their product lines. What we need is some way to delineate between clones and compatibles. At what point does the spreadsheet become other than a clone of Lotus 1-2-3, whether by additional functionality, different behavior or appearance, etc.? I suspect there are few judges and lawyers with sufficient technical background to make this determination. As usual, the above is only my opinion.