From: friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: [misc.int-property] Re: Apple loses "look and feel" lawsuit (forwarded)
Date: 13 Aug 92 10:24:33 GMT
	<1992Aug10.030009.1375@nntp.hut.fi>
	<FRIEDMAN.92Aug10221458@nutrimat.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
	<LEE.92Aug11144015@meercat.wang.com>
Followup-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Organization: Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139
In-reply-to: lee@wang.com's message of 11 Aug 92 18:40:15 GMT

In article <LEE.92Aug11144015@meercat.wang.com> lee@wang.com (Lee Story) writes:
>                                                               But has ANY
>major corporation forsworn in writing the right to attempt a lawsuit based
>on appearance of a display (look-and-feel)?  

   Borland has publicly stated that they do not think interfaces should be
copyrightable.  When they bought out Ashton-Tate, they dropped Ashton
Tate's lawsuit against Fox.  And as the defendant in the lawsuit with
Lotus, I should hope they take the stance that imitating the look-and-feel
of other software should be allowed anyway.

>Can you give us references?

   All I have personally is the text of an article that was posted on
Compuserve sometime in October of 1991.  I'll send the entire text by email
to anyone who is interested.  However, I will make note here that Philippe
Kahn, Borland's chairman, president, and CEO said, in part: "For many years
we have maintained that command sets as functional items should be promoted
as open standards..."

>I note that IBM machines (RS6Ks) are now a major target for GNU, and that
>IBM has historically been the master of proprietary systems, incompatible
>variants, and lock-ins.

   There are two concerns.  One is that IBM has a history of trade secrecy
and proprietary hardware/software.  Well, the easiest way to alleviate the
software problem is by porting GNU software to those systems.  I used to
get messages from IBM employees asking me when the GCC port to the RS6K
would be completed, presumably because they were planning to use that to
increase the attractiveness of their machines and boost sales.  On the
other hand, GNU software might cut into IBM's own software profits.  On the
whole I would guess porting GNU software to IBM hardware is a fairly
neutral issue for IBM (it has more benefit to end users and programmers, of
course).  Until we have a complete system that can completely replace AIX
it's not something IBM really has to worry about. 

   The other concern is that IBM presently owns more software patents than
any other company I know of.  It appears that IBM is mainly interested in
using those patents in order to get cross licenses.  I haven't seen any
recent case where they sued someone for patent infringement just to get
royalties, and their lawyers have publicly said that's not their main
interest, in an article in "Think" magazine, #5, 1990, quoted in part here:

    "You get value from patents in two ways," says Roger Smith, IBM
    Assistant General Counsel, intellectual property law.  "Through fees,
    and through licensing negotiations that give IBM access to other
    patents.

    "The IBM patent portfolio gains us the freedom to do what we need to do
    through cross-licensing--it gives us access to the inventions of others
    that are the key to rapid innovation.  Access is far more valuable to
    IBM than the fees it receives from its 9,000 active patents.  There's
    no direct calculation of this value, but it's many times larger than
    the fee income, perhaps an order of magnitude larger."


While this has implications of its own (such as demonstrating how software
patents will be of little benefit to small software developers), it also
indicates that IBM appears, for the moment, to be less interested in simply
squashing the little guy and more interested in making sure they can
negotiate the use any particular software technology they want.  While I
can't speak officially for the LPF, I would guess that it is the directors'
opinion that this isn't sufficiently bad enough to advocate a boycott of
IBM.