🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <khbrioINNcui@agate.berkeley.edu> adam@soda.berkeley.edu (Adam J Richter) writes:
| In article <1991Nov4.202449.12240@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> huntley@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Haydn Huntley) writes:
| >The relevant quote comes from page 3:
| >
| >	"Implicit in Judge Schwarzer's approach to the case is a
| >rejection of Apple's fundamental contention that the 'total concept
| >and feel' of the Macintosh graphic user interface is protectible."
| 
| 	The decision that you refer to was the one that required Apple
| to use that list of features that it felt constituted copyright
| infringement.  The decision only effected the way that Apple's
| claims of copyright infringement will be tested.  It did not decide
| the question of (user interface) copyright infringement.
| 
| 	For more information on "total concept and feel" and "look
| and feel" see Pamela Samuelson's May 1989 article in _The Communications
| of the ACM_, pp. 563-572.  Pamela Samuelson is an intellectual property
| law professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

I will read Pamela Samuelson's article, but it may be out of date,
because it was written at least a year before the summary of
proceedings came out.

The main issue I'm trying to raise here is, are we (I'm a member of
the LPF) justified in boycotting Apple?  The argument I've heard from
many people is something like this, "Apple is trying to unfairly
monopolize all of the good GUI's and keep everyone else from competing
with them, and Apple is suing their competitors."

Apple is not suing their competitors in general, rather they are in a
lawsuit with two of them, Microsoft and HP.  Microsoft licensed some
stuff from Apple, and relicensed it to HP.  The companies have
disagreed about the interpretation of the license.  The license
concerned Microsoft's applications which ran on the Mac and used the
Mac GUI.  The area of disagreement is that Microsoft claimed that the
license allowed them to freely copy the Mac GUI on other machines.
However, the Judge has concluded that Microsoft's contention would
"defy common sense."

I have heard that Microsoft is countersuing, but I haven't
substantiated it.

So the questions are, 

	1) Does the unsettled portion of the suit have any
		bearing on Apple monopolizing GUI's?

	2) What would be a reasonable response from the LPF
		 toward the lawsuit, as it currently exists?


--Haydn
--
;;  *****************************************************
;;  *  Haydn Huntley    huntley@copper.ucs.indiana.edu  *
;;  *                                                   *
;;  *   Member of the League for Programming Freedom.   *
;;  *   For more info, write to league@prep.ai.mit.edu  *
;;  *****************************************************