>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.
It's not just user expectations -- the slash commands are also the macro language, so that you must implement the same commands in order to be able to run spreadsheets that contain macros.
In other domains, standardized interfaces are considered to be a good thing. (The arrangement of controls in a car is a typical example.) The confusion between functional and non-functional elements in the two Lotus cases, which were decided by the same judge, is quite distressing. Fortunately, it seems that they're not being taken as precent anywhere else.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl[_at_]iecc.com, jlevine[_at_]delphi.com, 1037498[_at_]mcimail.com
Received on Mon Feb 28 1994 - 23:39:34 GMT
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