Conference noted::hackers_v1

The preceding note was written by someone at the Free Software Foundation
 (Project GNU).
  <_Jym_>

    What a ludicrous thought. If "look and feel" were copyright-able
    we would not have:
    
      telephone keypads by companies other than Western Electric
       QWERTY keyboards with "IBM" sculptured keys (vt100's for instance)
        DEC would be in trouble; the LK201 "looks" sort of like an IBM
        PC keyboard.
    
    What about all those automobiles that "look and feel" like European
    sedans? 
    
      We would never have competition without making competitive products
    look and feel similar. What user (of ANYTHING) wants to learn to
    use (or HAVE to learn to use) incompatible competing products???
    
    In the software arena, they call similar products "standardized".
    That's why they have standards, isn't it? So one implementation
    of BASIC or COBOL or LISP or PASCAL works on another machine, right?
    
    <flame off, for now>
    
    /pjh

    	Suspension bridges.
    
    	I am afraid you will have to take that thing in San Francisco
    down - it has the same look and feel as the Avon suspension bridge
    (though I admit it is a little larger).
    
    	It is worth noting that copright lasts a lot longer than patents.
    In Britain, a patent normally lasts 10 years, though extensions
    are possible, but no extensions are granted beyond 25 years. Copyright
    lasts for 100 years - it is only in the last few years that you
    can reprint Dickens without paying royalties to his descendants.
    Suspension bridges are certainly out of patent protection (if they
    ever had any), but are possibly not out of copyright protection
    (if they are copyrightable). Maybe someone from the Bristol office
    can confirm the age of the Avon bridge ? :-)
    
    	Dave
    

    
    Digital recently (last year or two) lost a suit against a company
    called C. Itoh for infringing (stealing) the (you guessed it) 'look and
    feel' of the VT220. It was a lot more that look and feel, if you took
    the labels off the two terminals one would be hard put to tell the
    difference between the two. The judge didn't buy it. 'Look and feel'
    is just too intangable.
    
    					Lance

>    difference between the two. The judge didn't buy it. 'Look and feel'
>    is just too intangible.
    
    The judge did rule though, that C. Itoh had to redo their manuals.
    It seems they Xeroxed part of the DIGITAL VT200 character tables :-)

Re: C. Itoh

I seem to remember that there was a bit more than "look and feel" in
the Digital case against C. Itoh.

C. Itoh added a few extra setup options to their terminal.  Remember that
the VT200 series has setup menus in several languages.  So does the C.
Itoh terminal.  But only for the DEC standard setup options;  all their new
options are only in English.

Just like their had dumped the DEC ROMs, and had stuck in a few extra features.

This one is, at least to me, the Look and Feel Test Case: Apple winning a
suit against Digital Research, forcing the latter to make its GEM windowing
user interface look less like that of the Macintosh, which itself had, by
Apple's own admission, the Look and Feel of a Xerox worstation.

= Giles =

    Apple didn't win. DR settled out of court. That's *very* different.
    
    	Jon

    I'm curious; what was the final outcome of that? Did Digital Research
    end up paying money to Apple? Or was the settlement discussed?
    
    /uninformed_in_vt.
    

    Yes. DR paid Apple some amount of money that I don't remember. Most
    observers I read agreed that it was cheaper than paying lawyers
    to fight the suit.
    
    	Jon

    I don't think this was a look and feel case.  Apple has a patent
    on the pull down menu style used on the mac.  While you may argue
    about the validity of this patent, DR didn't want to and changed
    GEM to use a different scheme (drop down menus).  There may have
    been money transfered as well (I don't remember).
    
    Steveg

The Atari ST uses the DRI GEM desktop which, as was noted, is similar
ti the McIntosh desktop (and to the Xerox Smalltalk interface and to
the user interface in many Lisp workstations).

The agreement between DRI and Apple requires DRI to lobotomize their
implementation (windows may not overlap, for example).

Atari does not intend to change their implementation.  It is rumored
that Jack Tramiel (pres. of Atari) would have no objection to being
sued by Apple.

Martin.

    re .11:
    
    Since it never got to court, speculating about whether it would be a
    look-and-feel case is precisely that, mere speculation. 
    
    Are you sure Apple has a patent on pull-down menus? I really find that
    hard to believe, given all the known instances of pull-down menus long
    before Apple ever did one. On the other hand, it may be a useless
    patent like the one Digital has on the IF/THEN/ELSE statement.
    
    	Jon

Re: .12

Byte reported sometime last year that one of the points of contention
between DRI and Apple was the look (I guess not the feel) of the GEM
trashcan.  DRI changed the look of their trashcan when Apple told DRI
that Apple was going to aggressively protect their "visual copyright."

I wonder if the GEM trashcan immediately destroys what you place in it
because it because DRI was worried about the "feel" of the Apple trashcan?
(On the Macintosh and the Amiga you can pull files back out of the trashcan.)
DRI was somewhat vulnerable to the Apple attack because DRI still hasn't
recovered from their disastrous loss of revenue when CPM died:  DRI's
revenues fell from a $40 million a year to a $1 million a year.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tramiel decided to take on Apple.  Atari is in
a much better position than DRI to fight a lawsuit, and Tramiel is on
public record as saying that it is sometimes cheaper to fight a lawsuit
than to honor a contract.  He is quit a feisty character.

    an aside to the real issue
    re .13
    
>   before Apple ever did one. On the other hand, it may be a useless
>   patent like the one Digital has on the IF/THEN/ELSE statement.

    Whats this about a Digital patent on IF/THEN/ELSE, if its in another
    note/conference please let me know.
    
    
    interested_in_history_of_DEC

    re .15:
    
    Last fall, Roger Heinen received a patent on some work he did. He
    invented a technique whereby the computer looks at some condition (like
    a variable being equal to some value or something like that) and if the
    condition is true, one path of code is executed, while if the condition
    is false, another path is executed. Roger was giggling about it
    himself.
    
    By the way, this revolutionary concept was invented in the VAXELN
    debugger.
    
    There is a similar patent that IBM has for XOR.
    
    	Jon