Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.

This article is about the "look and feel" copyright lawsuit between Apple Computer and Microsoft. There have been other lawsuits between the two companies.

Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994) was a copyright infringement lawsuit in which Apple Computer sought to prevent Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard from using visual graphical user interface (GUI) elements that were similar to those in Apple's Lisa and Macintosh operating systems. Some critics claimed that Apple was really attempting to gain all intellectual property rights over the desktop metaphor for computer interfaces, and perhaps all GUIs, on personal computers. Apple lost all claims in the lawsuit, except that the court ruled that the trash can icon and file folder icons from Hewlett-Packard's now-forgotten NewWave windows application were infringing. The lawsuit was filed in 1988 and lasted four years; the decision was affirmed on appeal in 1994, and the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by Apple was denied.

Apple had previously agreed to license certain parts of its GUI to Microsoft for use in Windows 1.0. When Microsoft made some changes in Windows 2.0, such as overlapping windows and other more Macintosh-like GUI features, Apple filed suit, and then added additional claims to the suit when Microsoft released Windows 3.0.

Apple claimed the "look and feel" of the Macintosh operating system, taken as a whole, was protected by copyright, and that each individual element of the interface (such as the existence of windows on the screen, the fact that they are rectangular, the fact that they are resizable, the fact that they overlap, and the fact that they have title bars) was not as important as all these elements taken together. After long argument, the judge insisted on an analysis of specific GUI elements that Apple claimed were infringements. Apple came up with a list of 189 GUI elements; the judge decided that 179 of these elements had been licensed to Microsoft in the Windows 1.0 agreement, and most of the remaining 10 elements were not copyrightable—either they were unoriginal to Apple, or they were the only possible way of expressing a particular idea.

In an odd twist midway through the suit, Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its GUIs. Xerox had invested in Apple and had invited the Macintosh design team to view their GUI computers at the PARC research lab; these visits had been very influential on the development of the Macintosh GUI. Xerox's lawsuit appeared to be a defensive move to ensure that if Apple v. Microsoft established that "look and feel" was copyrightable, then Xerox would be the primary beneficiary, rather than Apple. The Xerox case was dismissed because the three year statute of limitations had passed (i.e. Xerox waited too long to file suit.)

Impact

Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. is the most complicated software copyright lawsuit to date. Software developers and the Macintosh user community followed it with great interest. Some observers cast Apple as the villain, saying that after failing in the marketplace, it was trying to use the courts to corner the market on an idea that was benefiting the world, and if Apple won, the precedent would limit software developers' creative freedom. Apple's critics added that even if this were legally and ethically correct behavior, Apple wasn't the inventor of the GUI or the desktop metaphor in the first place. Others said Microsoft were the bad guys, brazenly stealing from Apple's work and flouting the law, and that if Microsoft won, a precedent was set that would allow big companies to steal the core concepts from any software developer's work and get away with it.

As it happened, the court's approach seemed to invalidate the copyrighting of a broad "look and feel" of a piece of software, though this was not decisively stated in the court's ruling. The fact that Apple and Microsoft had entered into the licensing agreement for Windows 1.0 made a large part of the case a mere contractual matter rather than a matter of copyright law — much against Apple's preference — so it was not necessary for the court to set a precedent in its ruling. It remains unclear what would have happened if Apple had acquired a software patent purporting to secure the "look and feel" of the Macintosh user interface as an invention, and had then pursued Microsoft and HP under patent law. Had Apple been able to win a look and feel suit, this precedent may have hindered the development of the X Window System and other open source GUIs.

As if it were a postscript to the case, Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997; among other announcements about several areas of cooperation between the two companies, it was noted that the arrangement would include a final settlement between the companies on all infringement questions regarding the Lisa and Macintosh GUI.

In recent years, Apple has resumed threats of litigation in this area. A common target has been Stardock, whose CEO Brad Wardell once joked that Apple's lawyers had him on speed-dial. Apple was not pleased when skins and themes for WindowBlinds, IconPackager and DesktopX looking similar to their Aqua GUI were released in mid-2000, over six months before the release of Mac OS X.

Other GUI borrowing

Apple has also copied certain innovations from other companies: tabbed dialogs on Macintosh appeared after IBM used them in OS/2. Since the original settlement of the lawsuit, many features of the Macintosh and Windows GUIs have been incorporated into the windowing environments of unrelated third-parties, such as OpenWindows, X11, and Solaris. While it could be argued that the Mac OS X dock is stolen from the Windows taskbar, the Mac OS dock is actually derived from the NeXTSTEP dock (Mac OS X itself originating from NeXTSTEP). However, the idea of a program taskbar or dock is a major design feature of RISC OS, which already featured its so-called iconbar as early as 1987.

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Impact

Other GUI borrowing

See also