From: dreier@lhasa.berkeley.edu (Roland Dreier)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: "official" FSF position on apple
Date: 15 Sep 92 19:11:17
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Math. Department.
	<1992Sep15.005357.14302@kithrup.COM>
	<DREIER.92Sep15145233@lhasa.berkeley.edu>
	<1992Sep15.224536.5018@kithrup.COM>
NNTP-Posting-Host: lhasa.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: sef@kithrup.COM's message of 15 Sep 92 22:45:36 GMT

In article <1992Sep15.224536.5018@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
   In article <DREIER.92Sep15145233@lhasa.berkeley.edu> dreier@lhasa.berkeley.edu (Roland Dreier) writes:
   I wrote:
   >Apple has sued uSoft and HP over "user-interface copyright violation."
   and
   >USL is suing BSDI and UCB, claiming that the Net/2 tape contains copyrighted
   >(or trade-secret-protected) USL code.
   Roland wrote:
   >So let me get this straight: Apple sued people, claiming their
   >copyrights were infringed.  This, of course, was evil and perfectly
   >valid grounds for a boycott.  USL is in the process of suing some
   >people, claiming that their copyrights were infringed.  Of course,
   >this is completely understandable and we shouldn't hold it against
   >them.

   [..]

   The LPF, the FSF, and a whole mess of people unaffiliated with either
   (including myself) do not believe in the validity of a "user-interface"
   copyright, that is, that the actions and "look'n'feel" of a program or
   system are copyrightable.  A large number of the people in that group
   (including myself) believe that making a "user-interface" copyright valid is
   going to open up a whole can of worms, and potentially destroy the
   free-software market, namely by making it illegal for someone to come up
   with a work-alike program for free that some entity has a non-free version
   of.

   In addition, USL has expressly stated that they *WILL NOT* sue people who
   clone their system, such as MWC's Coherent.  Their problem with the Net/2
   tape is that they claim it contains portions of their code.  They may or may
   not be right; I do not think they are, but I think they may have enough
   doubt to justify a lawsuit.

   The rest of the posting is more of what I would call idiocy if I were in the
   mood, but I'm not, so I'll just call it purposeful ignorance, and leave it
   up to Roland to do some research into the subject before posting again.  Or
   at least have someone else try to point out his errors.

OK, I'll admit I haven't done any reasearch on this subject since my
last post.  But the point I was trying to raise is that both Apple and
USL feel that copyrights they hold have been infringed.  *YOU* may
feel that Apple's copyright is without merit.  But usually that is up
to the court to decide.  You are very even-handed is allowing that USL
may have a case, even if you don't think they do.  I think this should
extend to Apple's case.

Yes, there is a difference between source code and "look and feel."
But source code is also different from a song, and people seem to
think that both songs and source code can be copyrighted.  Apple
happened to feel that their user interface also represented a
copyrightable work; you and the judge in their case don't think so.

On one hand, user interface copyrights are a bad thing; but on the
other hand, Apple spent quite a bit of time, effort and money thinking
out many aspects of their user interface and it seems that perhaps
they should be protected from having that work stolen by others
unwilling to either do the work themselves or license it from Apple.
As in the USL case, the merits of their copyright and the issue of
whether the defendents infringed them are two separate issues.

An example of this type of thing might be if I read someone's proof
of a hard theorem, understand it, and write my own proof using the
ideas of this proof but none of the specific language, and then
claim it as my own.  I would still be guilty of plagiarism, even if
I use none of the "source code."

I am not specifically for or against Apple, USL, FSF, Berkeley, or
anyone in particular.  I am just pointing out what I think is a weak
link in the FSF's reasoning.  That doesn't make me stupid (as I have
been called by several people).  I do know the difference between
source code and a user interface, contrary to what you might think.
--
Roland Dreier                                        dreier@math.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.org.eff.talk,comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.mach,misc.int-property,alt.suit.att-bsdi