Picketers Gather On Lotus' Doorstep To Protest Firms' Copyright Claims

Picketers Gather On Lotus' Doorstep To Protest Firms' Copyright Claims

By Evan O. Grossman
PC Week

May 29, 1989

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Marching in sandals and in wing tips, 150 academic and professional programmers converged on Lotus Development Corp.'s headquarters last week to protest ''look-and-feel'' copyright claims by Lotus, Apple Computer Inc. and Ashton-Tate.

''Apple and Lotus are taking advantage of ambiguities in the current law,'' said protester Bryan Kocher, president of the Association for Computing Machinery, a New York-based organization of computer programmers and scientists.

Calling for a boycott of all firms that are litigating over look-and-feel copyright infringement, the demonstrators handed out leaflets to Lotus employees and gave a copy of 1-2-3 back to the company.

Protesters said their main goal was to make users aware of what they claim are the dangers of software developers being able to copyright the appearance and behavior of a user interface.

''It may or may not have an effect on Lotus, but it'll make more people aware that it's an issue,'' said David Landskov, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Lowell, in Lowell, Mass.

''Keep the lawyers in their place, no one owns the interface,'' chanted demonstrators. ''1-2-3-4, kick the lawsuit out the door.''

The protesters argue that if the inventor of the standard QWERTY typewriter keyboard layout had tried to copyright its look and feel, there would be no standard layout today.

Richard Stallman, a founder of the League for Programming Freedom, the group that organized the protest, said that future actions and lobbying efforts are being planned.