🚀 go-pugleaf

michael@smectos.gang.umass.edu (Michael Callahan) writes:
>In article <1991Oct30.210639.26146@m.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>>This is not clear. Remember, Xerox thought -- at the time -- that user
>>interfaces were copyrightable, since they both restricted access to
>>their developments (since such disclosure might be considered to reduce
>>their rights) and required licenses before they disclosed most of their
>>developments. 

>Let me say that I don't know whether Xerox believed user interfaces
>to be copyrightable before, say, the mid-1980s.  It would be interesting
>to hear from someone who worked, for instance, at PARC during that
>time to find out whether that was a common belief.

I think there's plenty of evidence that they did; see below. Also, I've
worked at PARC (only for one summer, but...); the attitude seemed to be
commonly held that anything developed there was the property of Xerox
and deserved protection; similarly, things that Xerox couldn't get
protection for were somewhat discouraged from being worked on.

>However, I don't think that the behavior you cite is convincing
>evidence that Xerox did believe UIs copyrightable.  How does
>one reduce one's copyright rights by "disclosure", or by requiring
>licenses before disclosure?  This sounds a lot *more* like the
>behavior of someone who has an eye on trade secret law, where
>disclosure is an important concept and the precautions one takes
>to avoid it are highly relevant to the protection one gets from
>the law.

Remember that we're taking about 1980's copyright law. You're right, to
my understanding, that under the 1990 revision disclosure no longer
reduces one's copyright. However, under the 1980's law disclosure
without publication basically removed the right to copyright protection
with respect to those to whom the information was disclosed. Why?
Because copyright law only affects published information, and Xerox had
not publised anything yet. So disclosing their research to Apple would
have resulted in Apple obtaining the information without making an
illegal copy of published information (i.e. violating copyright).
Protection of disclosure prior to publication definitely was, and maybe
still is, strongly relevant to the protection one gets from the law.

>Furthermore, in the early 1980s the copyright law for software
>was rather uncertain--there were real questions, for example,
>about whether it even covered binary executable code, particularly
>in ROM (which was resolved in _Apple v. Franklin_).  I think
>that the climate tended to suggest that the scope of copyright
>law for software would be small rather than expansive.

This is true, but Apple v. Franklin had been decided by this point.
Besides, we're talking about user interface protection, which is
(legally) unrelated to the issue of binary code protection -- user
interfaces are inherently human-visable, which binary code isn't.

>>  Apple isn't the first company to claim that user
>>interfaces can be copyrighted; in fact, there were successful lawsuits
>>on the subject before the Macintosh came out (mostly in the video-game
>>area). 

>I believe the video-game cases had to do with "attract mode"--
>that is, the display the game puts on to convince you to drop
>in a quarter--rather than a user interface as one usually
>thinks of it.  The distinction is important because the 
>attract mode might be deemed an audiovisual work, which is
>explicitly a protectable class of works.

The "Pacman" case had to do with the actual play of the game. Basically,
someone made a game very similar to Pacman but with a different
dot-eating critter and different opponents. The courts ruled that the
game infringed on the "look and feel" of Pacman.

--John

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1991 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.