🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <NELSON.89Oct17094528@sun.clarkson.edu> nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu writes:
>True, but Apple wants it the other way.  They want the ideas behind the
>software (the "look and feel") to be protectable.

I'm not a big fan of "look and feel" copyrights, but I think I can
appreciate their attitude, and that's not how I understand look and
feel copyrights.  Vi and Emacs (ignoring the extension capabilities)
are implementations of the same general idea (visual text editing),
but they are distinguished by their look and feel.  SunTools is a
workstation window manager, but it looks and feels very different from
Apple's Macintosh window manager, and (as far as I know) Apple has no
beef with them; they both implement the same operations, but in a
different style.  Apple's and Lotus's complaints are with developers
who effectively took snapshots of their applications' displays.

One of the first computer look and feel lawsuits was against a
developer of a PacMan clone running on a PC or home video game system.
I believe it was settled by the programmer changing the design of some
of the graphics.  The play of the program was identical, but the
display no longer looked like a snapshot of the original.

Personally, I think patent law is more appropriate to this area.  If I
were a car manufacturer and I were to invent a new type of stick-shift
that is much easier to use than current ones I would patent the
design.  This would allow me to make extra money by either being the
sole manufacturer of the SuperShift, or by selling the right to
incorporate SuperShift to other car manufacturers.  A computer program
user interface is just as much an invention as an automobile user
interface, so why shouldn't it be subject to the same design
protection?  If I do expensive research to discover the optimal place
to place the trash can icon or an easy-to-use spreadhseet command
language, why shouldn't I be able to profit from the competitive edge
this provides?

Some might argue that the competitive advantage is retained by being
the first to market a product using the new design.  Historically,
this doesn't seem to be a major advantage.  Many success stories seem
to be the SECOND major vendor of a particular technology: Lotus is the
major spreadsheet vendor, and Software Arts is dead; IBM came out with
a PC after seeing Apple's success with the Apple II.  The second
vendor can take advantage of the first vendor priming the market, and
doesn't have to waste money on false starts and initial research.
It's often easier to design and market an "even better" widget than
the original widget.
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar