Internet and e-mail policy and practice
including Notes on Internet E-mail


2021
Months
Apr

Click the comments link on any story to see comments or add your own.


Subscribe to this blog


RSS feed


Home

06 Apr 2021

The Supreme Court Decides that Compatible Software is Still Legal Copyright Law

Back in the 1980s, everyone used the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet on their PCs. In 1989, Borland released a competitor, Quattro Pro. It used the same menu commands as 1-2-3 so that users could import their 1-2-3 spreadsheets with keyboard macros. Lotus sued Borland, and after a loss in the district court, Borland won on appeal, arguing that the keyboard commands are a "method of operation" and not subject to copyright. Lotus appealed to the Supreme Court, which deadlocked 4-4 (one justice was recused) in 1996. That meant the appeals court decision was affirmed but it did not set a formal precedent. Since then everyone assumed that settled the matter, you can't copyright the way a program works or its interfaces.

Well, everyone except one guy in Hawaii.

See more ...


  posted at: 21:43 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Copyright_Law/oragoog.html

Topics


My other sites

Who is this guy?

Airline ticket info

Taughannock Networks

Other blogs

CAUCE
ICO Fines Manchester Firms £150K for Flood of Unlawful Spam Texts
21 days ago

A keen grasp of the obvious
Italian Apple Cake
785 days ago

Related sites

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

Network Abuse Clearinghouse

My Mastodon feed



© 2005-2024 John R. Levine.
CAN SPAM address harvesting notice: the operator of this website will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by this website to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail messages.