Re: About Computer Software and Patents

On Thu, 24 Feb 1994, Trotter Hardy wrote:
>
> If a court wants to declare that a copyrightable interface has
> become so useful to the public that it can no longer receive
> copyright protection, then the court should ask the executive
> branch to initiate condemnation proceedings, set a fair market
> value on the interface (which presumably will be quite high,
> since everyone is asserting that they must have that interface
> and no other), and pay that price to the originator. That's the
> Constitutional way of turning private property over to public
> use.
>
> --Trotter Hardy
 

Obviously, you've never been a programmer. Imagine a bunch of programmers sitting around Borland's labs, totally stumped because Lotus uses /File as their first command, and the Borland programmers can't come up with anything original to put as their first command. Ergo, they copy Lotus' "copyrighted" (and in Trotter's view somehow better and more "useful") menu structure to make up for their lack of originality. Does this sound riduculous? I hope so.

What is really going on is that Borland is not copying Lotus, but is making a "reverse impression copy" of user expectations. Think of it like a mold. Lotus built a copyrightable statue, and 1-2-3 users molded their brains to fit snugly against the 1-2-3 statue/interface. Along comes Borland, seeking to provide a snug fit to the dents in those users' heads (not a comment on the quality of 1-2-3 -- I think it's a good product -- but I also like my mold analogy). Thus, Borland didn't copy Lotus' statue, but reverse copied the users' brains. They didn't have to do this because they couldn't come up with their own statue. In fact, the menu structure Borland originally supplied as an alternative to the 1-2-3 menu structure was a better "statue"; they only used the 1-2-3 interface to get access to trained users.

There is nothing special about Lotus' interface. It's not that interfaces aren't innovative (e.g., the PARC/Macintosh interface), it's just that the particular arrangement common between the Lotus and Borland menus is not the product of much ergonomic thought. Now, Lotus' HAL interface (which they bought from GNP and then promptly killed) is a totally different story.

The real question, is not whether condemnation proceedings are proper, but whether Lotus owns the exclusive rights to market to users trained on their product. If they have a right to exclude others from these users, then you are completely correct that the elimination of this exclusion is a taking. However, as a user, I am glad this right doesn't exist, and I am annoyed at people think it does, since they force me to continually learn new interfaces. Remember Ined, Wordstar, Crosstalk, vi, Sidekick, Borland Pascal, etc.?

-- 
Phil Albert, full-time patent attorney and philosopher, part-time car thief
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