Look And Feel: Software Patents

Yesterday a federal court jury decided in favor of Apple and against Samsung in a lawsuit over patents in the smart phone industry. The real target, though, is apparently Google and its Android software. The claim, upheld by the jury, is that the Samsung phone copied the "look and feel" of Apple's iPhone.

Go back in time twenty-five years.

In 1987, Lotus Corporation, whose 1-2-3 spreadsheet dominated the PC industry under the MS-Dos operating system, sued three smaller software companies for having copied the "look and feel" of the Lotus spreadsheet. The three companies were Paperback Software, whose low cost "VP Planner" had significant functional improvements over other spreadsheets, including 1-2-3 and Excel; Mosaic, and Borland's Quattro.

I had used three of the four spreadsheets involved, and at the time was using VP Planner for my own spreadsheets. VP Planner had introduced a "three dimensional" feature to spreadsheets and was significantly better at printing spreadsheets on dot matrix printers than 1-2-3. Borland's product, too, was more convenient for users than 1-2-3.

Lotus, in turn, had clearly appropriated the look and feel of the Visicalc spreadsheet as it operated under the CP/M operating system.

I thought at the time that "look and feel" was a defective concept and I resented Lotus' attempts to protect market share by lawsuit rather than by improving the product. Although Lotus won against Paperback Software, who went out of business, they lost the case against Borland. I suspect Borland won, not because their case had more merit, but because their pockets were deeper. Anyhow, I never again purchased a Lotus product.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for protection of intellectual property, but I think in important respects patent law has got out of hand. When a company can patent a person's blood cells because they did research on them, that's out of hand. When companies get to patent icons that are common representations, that is out of hand.

Shame on you, Apple!