Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.

(This article is about the "look and feel" copyright lawsuit between Apple Computer and Microsoft. There have been, and presumably will continue to be, other lawsuits between the two companies.)

The Apple v. Microsoft copyright infringement lawsuit was an attempt by Apple Computer to prevent Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard from using visual GUI elements that were similar to those in Apple's Macintosh operating system. Critics claimed that Apple was really attempting to gain all intellectual property rights over all GUIs on personal computers. The lawsuit lasted four years. 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 operating system were infringing.

Apple had previously agreed to license certain parts of its GUI to Microsoft for use in Windows 1.0. When Microsoft made large improvements in Windows 2.0, Apple filed suit, and then added additional claims to the suit when Windows 3.0 debuted.

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. To this day, the Windows operating system desktop features a "Recycle Bin" rather than a "Trash" can, presumably as a precaution against further lawsuits from Apple on this matter.

In an odd twist midway through the suit, Xerox filed suit against Apple, declaring that Xerox was the holder of any and all copyrights on all GUIs. Xerox had been an investor in Apple, and had themselves 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. The Xerox case was dismissed on a technicality.