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To: Richard Kimball
This has been posted at least a hundred times on FR and shot down at least a hundred times. Apple paid $100K for a four hour demonstration of the Xerox GUI. Xerox knew what they were doing when they gave the demo, and knew that Apple was making a computer with a GUI, and that this was the reason they wanted the Xerox demo. There was other compensation involved. Swordmaker has all the details, but Apple did not "steal" the GUI from Xerox.

The fact that Xerox has not tried to sue Apple is the clearest indication that the GUI concept wasn't technically stolen. But that doesn't change the fact that idea wasn't Apple's (could not be copyrighted by Apple) and therefore couldn't be stolen from Apple by Microsoft, as alleged in Apple's lawsuit.

27 posted on 07/06/2010 1:39:07 PM PDT by The_Victor (If all I want is a warm feeling, I should just wet my pants.)
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To: The_Victor; Swordmaker
There was a lawsuit settlement, I forget the details, but Apple came out of the MS lawsuit in pretty good shape. IIRC, MS had to agree to continue to build Office for the Mac, and the 150 million in shares was also part of the settlement. There may have been an agreement on Microsoft's part to license certain technology from Apple.

There were non-disclosure agreements on part of the lawsuit, so details aren't fully known.

28 posted on 07/06/2010 1:48:07 PM PDT by Richard Kimball (We're all criminals. They just haven't figured out what some of us have done yet.)
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To: The_Victor
The fact that Xerox has not tried to sue Apple is the clearest indication that the GUI concept wasn't technically stolen.

Xerox tried to sue Apple but it went nowhere. Apple did improve quite a bit on the basic Xerox concept, and managed to shoehorn it into a relatively inexpensive computer. Only large corporations could afford what Xerox eventually made from the technology.

OTOH, Microsoft tried to copy Apple and produced some quite inferior copies that had problems running well on current hardware. BTW, Microsoft did use Apple code in Windows without permission. Microsoft had to pay out a lot for that.

30 posted on 07/06/2010 1:58:08 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: The_Victor
The fact that Xerox has not tried to sue Apple is the clearest indication that the GUI concept wasn't technically stolen. But that doesn't change the fact that idea wasn't Apple's (could not be copyrighted by Apple) and therefore couldn't be stolen from Apple by Microsoft, as alleged in Apple's lawsuit.

In actual fact, Vic, in 1990, after the Mac came out and Apple was suing Microsoft over the "look and feel" issues of Windows, a new CEO at Xerox initiated a similar lawsuit against Apple based on the myth that Apple had "stolen" the GUI from Xerox's PARC during those visits. The judge tossed Xerox's suit out for two reasons 1) Apple produced the signed documents outlining the Apple common stock in exchange for PARC visits and rights for ideas learned during said visits agreement; and, 2) the technicality that Xerox's suit was filed far too late and any statute of limitations for damages clock had started ticking in January 1983 with the release of the Apple Lisa. However, the judge ordered sanctions on Xerox's legal counsel for bringing the case in light of the signed agreements for not doing due diligence and wasting the court's time.

Attempts have been made to bury these facts. An article written by Yvonne Lee—quoted clumsily in the Wikipedia article on the Apple v Microsoft suit that initiated the Xerox suit—goes as far as manufacturing a statement from a "Xerox spokesman" saying that Xerox did indeed own some Apple stock they had purchased in August of 1979 "as an investment" which they later sold, to explain away the stock that Xerox got in the agreement. Lee's article also quotes others to denigrate the accounts of top Macintosh people such as Jef Raskin about the PARC visits. There are some RED FLAGS with the Lee article that reveal it to be fraudulent. Xerox could NOT have purchased common stock in Apple as an investment in August of 1979. Apple's IPO did not take place until December 12, 1980. The Lee article prompted two Mac developers to document the events, in detail, and they produced documents and photographic evidence proving her article to be FUD.

118 posted on 07/06/2010 11:51:43 PM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: The_Victor
The fact that Xerox has not tried to sue Apple is the clearest indication that the GUI concept wasn't technically stolen. But that doesn't change the fact that idea wasn't Apple's (could not be copyrighted by Apple) and therefore couldn't be stolen from Apple by Microsoft, as alleged in Apple's lawsuit.

Ideas cannot be copyrighted. Specific design elements and implementations can be patented (though "look and feel" patents are controversial), and those elements were introduced on the Mac, duplicated in Windows, and absent on the Alto/Star.

125 posted on 07/07/2010 8:00:16 AM PDT by ReignOfError
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