9 Jun
2005
9 Jun
'05
3:07 p.m.
Hi,
--- Quandary <ai2097(a)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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