Re: Lotus v. Borland

Hi all

Thanks to everyone for all your comments, and info.

On Tue, 21 Sep 93 15:30:05 -0400, Riva Bickel wrote:

>It's not the tree arrangements but the specific commands that are in the
>tree that Judge Keeton considers protectable. The BNA summary of
>the case was sufficient to indicate one disquieting comment by
>Judge Keeton. Althought he stated that the opinion was directed
>to "on-the-fly" macro conversion and did not relate to a case
>where the macros were converted once and then used in their converted
>form (as, for example, an interprested as compared to a compiled
>language), there does not seem to be much difference in the reasoning -
>in either case the command structure of Lotus would have to be referenced
>in order to do the translation.

Though I have not read the decision (we don't get free access to LEXIS here -- anyone who wants to send me it earns my eternal thanks), the argument in relation to 'tree arrangements' and the inherent data structure which must underlie it, seems remarkably similar to the old Synercom case. Just transfer the expression 'tree arrangement' for the words 'input formats' in Judge Higginbotham's ruling about 'sweeping monopolies' and the old 'H-pattern gearstick' argument.

Following on from that, did the judge in this (or in the last Apple v Microsoft decision, which I also don't have -- hint, hint) look at the question of 'network externalities'? It seems to me at least that (contrary to what I have argued in the past) that Peter Menell's argument about network externalities is a useful one. I happen not to agree with it, for at least two reasons, but I am interested to see if the judges over there are now starting to use economic arguments in rationalising copyright policy.

I also think Don B's comment is a good one. What will be the effect of this decision on the literarlly hundreds of programs which nowadays include as standard file translation capabilities. Aren't we going back to the 'input format' concepts that were so problematic in Synercom?

Regards

Dan.

Dan Hunter                                              The Law School
                                           The University of Melbourne
                                           Parkville,  Victoria,  3052 
Phone: (+61 3) 344 4753                                      AUSTRALIA
Fax:   (+61 3) 347 2392          Email: dah[_at_]rumpole.law.unimelb.edu.au
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