Court Opinion

ID: 9487894
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:29:24.058511+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:32.910082
License: Public Domain

BOUDIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The importance of this ease, and a slightly different emphasis in my view of the underlying problem, prompt me to add a few words to the majority’s tightly focused discussion.
I.
Most of the law of copyright and the “tools” of analysis have developed in the context of literary works such as novels, plays, and films. In this milieu, the principal problem — simply stated, if difficult to resolve — is to stimulate creative expression without unduly limiting access by others to the broader themes and concepts deployed by the author. The middle of the spectrum presents close cases; but a “mistake” in providing too much protection involves a small cost: subsequent authors treating the same themes must take a few more steps away from the original expression.
The problem presented by computer programs is fundamentally different in one re-speet. The computer program is a means for causing something to happen; it has a mechanical utility, an instrumental role, in accomplishing the world’s work. Granting protection, in other words, can have some of the consequences of patent protection in limiting other people’s ability to perform a task in the most efficient manner. Utility does not bar copyright (dictionaries may be copyrighted), but it alters the calculus.
Of course, the argument for protection is undiminished, perhaps even enhanced, by utility: if we want more of an intellectual product, a temporary monopoly for the creator provides incentives for others to create other, different items in this class. But the “cost” side of the equation may be different where one places a very high value on public access to a useful innovation that may be the most efficient means of performing a given task. Thus, the argument for extending protection may be the same; but the stakes on the other side are much higher.
It is no accident that patent protection has preconditions that copyright protection does not — notably, the requirements of novelty and non-obviousness — and that patents are granted for a shorter period than copyrights. This problem of utility has sometimes manifested itself in copyright cases, such as Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 25 L.Ed. 841 (1879), and been dealt with through various formulations that limit copyright or create limited rights to copy. But the case law and doctrine addressed to utility in copyright have been brief detours in the general march of copyright law.
Requests for the protection of computer menus present the concern with fencing off access to the commons in an acute form. A new menu may be a creative work, but over time its importance may come to reside more in the investment that has been made by users in learning the menu and in building their own mini-programs — macros—in reliance upon the menu. Better typewriter key*820board layouts may exist, but the familiar QWERTY keyboard dominates the market because that is what everyone has learned to use. See P. David, CLIO and the Economics of QWERTY, 75 Am.Econ.Rev. 332 (1985). The QWERTY keyboard is nothing other than a menu of letters.
Thus, to assume that computer programs are just one more new means of expression, like a filmed play, may be quite wrong. The “form” — the written source code or the menu structure depicted on the screen — look hauntingly like the familiar stuff of copyright; but the “substance” probably has more to do with problems presented in patent law or, as already noted, in those rare cases where copyright law has confronted industrially useful expressions. Applying copyright law to computer programs is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces do not quite fit.
All of this would make no difference if Congress had squarely confronted the issue, and given explicit directions as to what should be done. The Copyright Act of 1976 took a different course. While Congress said that computer programs might be subject to copyright protection, it said this in very general terms; and, especially in § 102(b), Congress adopted a string of exclusions that if taken literally might easily seem to exclude most computer programs from protection. The only detailed prescriptions for computers involve narrow issues (like back-up copies) of no relevance here.
Of course, one could still read the statute as a congressional command that the familiar doctrines of copyright law be taken and applied to computer programs, in cookie cutter fashion, as if the programs were novels or play scripts. Some of the eases involving computer programs embody this approach. It seems to be mistaken on two different grounds: the tradition of copyright law, and the likely intent of Congress.
The broad-brush conception of copyright protection, the time limits, and the formalities have long been prescribed by statute. But the heart of copyright doctrine — what may be protected and with what limitations and exceptions — has been developed by the courts through experience with individual cases. B. Kaplan, An Unhurried View of Copyright 40 (1967). Occasionally Congress addresses a problem in detail. For the most part the interstitial development of copyright through the courts is our tradition.
Nothing in the language or legislative history of the 1976 Act, or at least nothing brought to our attention, suggests that Congress meant the courts to abandon this case-by-case approach. Indeed, by setting up § 102(b) as a counterpoint theme, Congress has arguably recognized the tension and left it for the courts to resolve through the development of ease law. And case law development is adaptive: it allows new problems to be solved with help of earlier doctrine, but it does not preclude new doctrines to meet new situations.
II.
In this case, the raw facts are mostly, if not entirely, undisputed. Although the inferences to be drawn may be more debatable, it is very hard to see that Borland has shown any interest in the Lotus menu except as a fall-back option for those users already committed to it. by prior experience or in order to run their own macros using 1-2-3 commands. At least for the amateur, accessing the Lotus menu in the Borland Quattro or Quattro Pro program takes some effort.
Put differently, it is unlikely that users who value the Lotus menu for its own sake— independent of any investment they have made themselves in learning Lotus’ commands or creating macros dependent upon them — would choose the Borland program in order to secure access to the Lotus menu. Borland’s success is due primarily to other features. Its rationale for deploying the Lotus menu bears the ring of truth.
Now, any use of the Lotus menu by Bor-land is a commercial use and deprives Lotus of a portion of its “reward,” in the sense that an infringement claim if allowed would increase Lotus’ profits. But this is circular reasoning: broadly speaking, every limitation on copyright or privileged use diminishes the reward of the original creator. Yet not every writing is copyrightable or every use an infringement. The provision of reward is *821one concern of copyright law, but it is not the only one. If it were, copyrights would be perpetual and there would be no exceptions.
The present case is an unattractive one for copyright protection of the menu. The menu, commands (e.g., “print,” “quit”) are largely for standard procedures that Lotus did not invent and are common words that Lotus cannot monopolize. What is left is the particular combination and sub-grouping of commands in a pattern devised by Lotus. This arrangement may have a more appealing logic and ease of use than some other configurations; but there is a certain arbitrariness to many of the choices.
If Lotus is granted a monopoly on this pattern, users who have learned the command structure of Lotus 1-2-3 or devised their own macros are locked into Lotus, just as a typist who has learned the QWERTY keyboard would be the captive of anyone who had a monopoly on the production of such a keyboard. Apparently, for a period Lotus 1-2-3 has had such sway in the market that it has represented the de facto standard for electronic spreadsheet commands. So long as Lotus is the superior spreadsheet — either in quality or in price — there may be nothing wrong with this advantage.
But if a better spreadsheet comes along, it is hard to see why customers who have learned the Lotus menu and devised macros for it should remain captives of Lotus because of an investment in learning made by the users and not by Lotus. Lotus has already reaped a substantial reward for being first; assuming that the Borland program is now better, good reasons exist for freeing it to attract old Lotus customers: to enable the old customers to take advantage of a new advance, and to reward Borland in turn for making a better product. If Bor-land has not made a better product, then customers will remain with Lotus anyway.
Thus, for me the question is not whether Borland should prevail but on what basis. Various avenues might be traveled, but the main choices are between holding that the menu is not protectable by copyright and devising a new doctrine that Borland’s use is privileged. No solution is perfect and no intermediate appellate court can make the final choice.
To call the menu a “method of operation” is, in the common use of those words, a defensible position. After all, the purpose of the menu is not to be admired as a work of literary or pictorial art. It is to transmit directions from the user to the computer, i.e., to operate the computer. The menu is also a “method” in the dictionary sense because it is a “planned way of doing something,” an “order or system,” and (aptly here) an “orderly or systematic arrangement, sequence or the like.” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary 853 (1991).
A different approach would be to say that Borland’s use is privileged because, in the context already described, it is not seeking to appropriate the advances made by Lotus’ menu; rather, having provided an arguably more attractive menu of its own, Borland is merely trying to give former Lotus users an option to exploit their own prior investment in learning or in macros. The difference is that such a privileged use approach would not automatically protect Borland if it had simply copied the Lotus menu (using different codes), contributed nothing of its own, and resold Lotus under the Borland label.
The closest analogue in conventional copyright is the fair use doctrine. E.g., Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 105 S.Ct. 2218, 85 L.Ed.2d 588 (1985). Although invoked by Borland, it has largely been brushed aside in this case because the Supreme Court has said that it is “presumptively” unavailable where the use is a “commercial” one. See id. at 562, 105 S.Ct. at 2231-32. But see Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 1164, 1174; 127 L.Ed.2d 500 (1994). In my view, this is something less than a definitive answer; “presumptively” does not mean “always” and, in any event, the doctrine of fair use was created by the courts and can- be adapted to new purposes.
But a privileged use doctrine would certainly involve problems of its own. It might more closely tailor the limits on copyright protection to the reasons for limiting that protection; but it would entail a host of administrative problems that would cause *822cost and delay, and would also reduce the ability of the industry to predict outcomes. Indeed, to the extent that Lotus’ menu is an important standard in the industry, it might be argued that any use ought to be deemed privileged.
In sum, the majority’s result persuades me and its formulation is as good, if not better, than any other that occurs to me now as within the reach of courts. Some solutions {e.g., a very short copyright period for menus) are not options at all for courts but might be for Congress. In all events, the choices are important ones of policy, not linguistics, and they should be made with the underlying considerations in view.