Opinion ID: 2974224
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The appearance of dialog boxes

Text: Copyright law does not afford LawMode protection for the appearance of the dialog boxes because the appearance is not sufficiently original. The appearance is largely a result of the default settings on HotDocs, the template’s authoring tool. LawMode’s and Lexis’s dialog boxes look very similar, such that a user who looked at LawMode’s and Lexis’s dialog boxes would have a hard time telling the two products apart. Both of the dialog boxes are rectangular and have a blue-shaded header. The area in between text boxes is gray and the fonts are the same. In the table of contents, folders are displayed next to an icon that looks like a manila legal folder. The icon that lets a user close a dialog box is a large red X and the help icon is a blue question mark. These similarities result from both Lexis’s and LawMode’s using HotDocs as the authoring tool. The appearance of the dialog boxes is not original because it is a function of HotDocs’ default settings. It is undisputed that the appearance of the dialog boxes is a function of the default settings on HotDocs. LawMode, however, points out that Lexis could have changed the appearance of the dialog boxes by not opting for the default settings. LawMode argues that Lexis chose the default settings, and thus Lexis copied LawMode’s “creative” choice by also using HotDocs’ default settings in its product. LawMode’s choice to use the default settings is not subject to copyright protection. Some programming choices are either too trivial to support a finding of originality or are so constrained by practical reality as to lack originality. See generally Lexmark Int’l Inc. v. Static Control No. 05-1513 Ross Brovins & Oehmke v. Lexis Nexis Group Page 7 Components, Inc., 387 F.3d 522, 540-41 (6th Cir. 2004). LawMode’s “choice” to use HotDocs’ default settings was too trivial to be original because using the default setting amounted to no more than adopting the choices made by the developer of HotDocs. Copyright law extends protection to works that are “independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works).” See Feist, 499 U.S. 345-46. LawMode’s choice to use the default settings is more in the nature of copying from other works than independent creation. In the instant case, as Lexis’s software developer stated in her affidavit, HotDocs’ default settings are the most efficient choice. LawMode’s choice to use the default settings is not copyrightable because the decision to copy another person’s creative choice does not create an original work. As the district court noted, the fact that LawMode chose [HotDocs’] “default” settings is simply the result of [HotDocs’] preselecting the most convenient and efficient choices for the automator. LawMode’s choosing to use [HotDocs’] default settings, as opposed to selecting other less efficient options for automating the forms, also does not exhibit the amount of creativity necessary to support a copyright. Ross, Brovins & Oehmke, P.C. v. Lexis Nexis, 348 F. Supp. 2d. 845, 861 (E.D. Mich. 2004).