Visicalc Lawsuit is Settled

Visicalc Lawsuit is Settled

By David E. Sanger
The New York Times

September 18, 1984

One of the most bitterly fought lawsuits in the personal computer industry, pitting the company that developed the once-popular Visicalc program against the company that held the rights to market it, was settled out of court yesterday.

Analysts said that the suit, which went on for a year as sales of Visicalc slumped, appeared to end in a draw.

Under its terms, Software Arts of Wellesley, Mass., which developed Visicalc, the first spreadsheet program for a personal computer, would now market it.

But Visicorp, the San Jose, Calif., company that has marketed Visicalc since 1979, will retain rights to other parts of the ''Visi'' series - programs it developed on its own that are primarily extensions or improvements of Visicalc. Visicorp also agreed to pay Software Arts about $500,000 in royalties it had withheld while the suit was pending.

Comments From Companies

''We decided that lawsuits just don't make sense,'' said Julian Lange, the president of Software Arts, in a telephone interview yesterday. ''Now we can devote 100 percent of our attention to creative software products.''

A spokesman for Visicorp, Michele T. Niven, said that ''we are happy to have this settled because it removes a cloud we were under,'' but she declined to discuss the settlement in detail.

The suit began in September 1983. At the time, Visicalc was already being displaced as the leading spreadsheet program by Lotus 1-2-3, a program that performed many functions that Visicalc could not.

In its complaint, Visicorp charged that Software Arts was a year or more late in developing advanced versions of Visicalc, especially for the International Business Machines Personal Computer.

Software's Countersuit

Software Arts countersued, saying that Visicorp had violated a 1979 agreement by failing to market Visicalc vigorously. Instead, Software Arts charged, Visicorp was putting its resources into sales of Visi-On, a more sophisticated program that Visicorp had developed itself. For a while, both companies were marketing slightly different versions of Visicalc, which confused retailers and consumers.

Monthly sales of the Visicalc program dropped from 39,000 in January 1983, to less than 5,700 at the end of last year. Visicorp asserts that there have been almost no sales for the last few months, and thus it gave up little to Software Arts.

But Mr. Lange insisted yesterday that the program is not dead.

''We have done a lot to improve it, and we will market it aggressively,'' he said. On Wednesday, Software Arts will introduce its newest package, a desk-organizing program called Spotlight, he said.