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NY Times: Apple & Microsoft disclose a 1985 pact | 126 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
NY Times: Apple & Microsoft disclose a 1985 pact
Authored by: hardmath on Friday, July 27 2012 @ 10:59 AM EDT
I'm not trying to Defend Apple (I hold a grudge against them going back to the
Sculley era), or to disagree with your recollection broadly. I was trying to
fill in some historical details, largely illustrating your point that the
dispute concerned an early version of Windows (though it persisted through to
Windows 3.0 and drew a sort of countersuit from Xerox against Apple).

It's nitpicky of me, but I did essay that Apple had _some_ basis for their
complaint inasmuch as Microsoft signed the licensing agreement &
thereby_acknowledged_ Apple held some rights in the GUI elements. The courts
took the dispute seriously enough to go through claim infringed elements, but
wound up holding over the course of time that none of the claims was truly
infringement *unless* Apple could prove in a jury trial "virtual
identity" of the Windows and Macintosh interfaces. At that point Apple
simply said they would not oppose Microsoft's (and HP's) summary motions for
dismissal.

Rather than say the dispute was baseless, I'd regard it more as a precedent for
how much copying is really needed to press a copyright infringement claim on
"look and feel".

From the Lessons Learned Dept., now Apple is using patent law against Samsung.
Certainly I hope Samsung invalidates Apple's design patents and proves
noninfringement and collects costs from Apple. Samsung has not acknowledged any
debt of intellectual property to Apple, and I hope this will make their task all
the easier... regardless of what Florian might predict.

regards, hm


---
"Prolog is an efficient programming language because it is a very stupid theorem
prover." -- Richard O'Keefe

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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