[sittnick]

Not so. Look up the old case, Lotus v. Paperback Software, 1991. The court (incredibly!) ruled that, although Adam Osborne's spreadsheet code was indeed unique, Paperback's software had the same ''look and feel'' as 1-2-3, and thus was in violation of copyright for some reason or other (this latter was NEVER coherently explained, btw). ''Look and feel'', eh?

That case was more comprehensible. Paperback Software (and Mosaic's "Twin") had the exact same menu structure and command set. It would be like Toyota suing Ford for making an exact replica of the front grille and dashboard. I'm not saying Lotus was right (in court, they actually used Excel as an example of how to make a spreadsheet without violating the look and feel.) Borland would also get sued over its Sprint word processor, which could mimic half-a-dozen other word processors (wordstar, multimate,word, wordperfect, etc.) by changing preferences.

I am thinking that the look nad feel cases might have as much to do with copyrights and trademarks rather than patents (Apple had GEM PAY for a trash can icon, one reason why Steve Jobs' NeXT and Microsoft used the black hole and recycle bin.

[SAJ]

Lotus v Paperback was indeed a copyright argument.

The ''patenting'' of software, or portions of it, almost invariably boils down to the patenting of an algorithm or algorithms, which is nonsensical pure and simple.

Imagine someone patenting, say, the method of taking square roots by hand. Impossible to conceive. Yet, software-based algorithms are patented every day, some of which are not even fully-defined logically.

Take dithering, for example. Most dithering algorithms utilise some randomness in setting the color of a 'fractional' pixel. This is an 'algorithm'?? Puh-lease!