Hi,
--- Quandary ai2097@yahoo.com wrote:
I call BS. The Lotus 1-2-3 fiasco and the Apple vs. MS suit are the two things that come immediately to mind as legal precedence. You can't copyright a "layout" (read: look and feel, menu structure, screen order, etc.). If you are referring to directory layout on the disk itself, I think you will have a VERY hard time trying to argue that it's copyrightable -- since layout is effectively the command-line look-and-feel for a given disk. You don't have to look far for proof on that, either; moving between various *ix distros, it's easy to get lost when one distro stores its files in a different place from where you're expecting.
If you can show me legal precedence for your statements, I'll be happy to reconsider my stance. I assume if you're making these claims, you have something to back them up, and I'm interested in hearing what your support is.
You are correct as far as I read it but IANAL. I don't think look and feel or layout is copyrightable. Sure you can publish a layout spec and that spec is now a copyright work but not the layout itself.
Again, I'm going to call BS. You don't get copyright on an aggregation of work. If I went and copied all the articles (and ONLY the articles) out of a newspaper that ran only syndicated stories, the real copyright owners would have to come after me -- the newspaper could not. The only way the paper could come after me is if I accidentally copied content that (1) one of their writers wrote as a "work for hire," and that the paper holds the copyright to, or (2) I inadvertently copied one of their trade/service marks, implying their endorsement of the copied content when no such endorsement exists.
Correct also as far as I can tell.
Thanks Steven
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