Imagine if each car manufacturer had to design a different way to start, stop, and steer a car. Large companies have an unfair advantage wherever lawsuits become commonplace. Since they can afford to sue, they can intimidate smaller developers with threats even when they don't really have a case. Interface improvements will come slower, since incremental evolution through creative partial imitation will no longer occur. Open Computing magazine reported a Microsoft vice president as threatening to sue people who copy the interface of Windows.
Users invest a great deal of time and money in learning to use computer interfaces.
Far more, in fact, than software developers invest in developing and even implementing the interfaces. Whoever can own an interface, has made its users into captives, and misappropriated their investment. To protect our freedom from monopolies like these, a group of programmers and users have formed a grass-roots political organization, the League for Programming Freedom. The purpose of the League is to oppose monopolistic practices such as interface copyright and software patents. The League calls for a return to the legal policies of the recent past, in which programmers could program freely.