Borland Will Fight Ruling Favoring Lotus Copyrights : Technology: It begins shipping a redesigned version of Quattro Pro after a judge held that it had incorporated Lotus program features.
Reacting quickly to a damaging legal verdict, Borland International on Monday began shipping a new version of its popular Quattro Pro software program designed not to infringe on Lotus Development Corp. copyrights.
In a ruling late Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Keeton in Boston held that Borland had violated Lotus copyrights by incorporating “menus” of computer commands and other features that mimic those used in Lotus’s 1-2-3 program--long the No. 1-selling financial spreadsheet program.
The ruling adds new urgency to a high-stakes debate over the way intellectual property law is applied to computer software, and some observers said the basic issues in the Borland-Lotus dispute may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Borland stock fell $1.75 a share to close at $46 in heavy trading on the NASDAQ market. Lotus, also traded on NASDAQ, rose $1 to $19.25
Borland, a Scotts Valley company, is expected to appeal Friday’s ruling.
The company--and many others in the computer industry--argue that granting broad copyright protection to the so-called user interface of a software program will stifle innovation and hand far too much power to a few leading computer companies.
The argument centers on the legal distinction between ideas, or functions, which can be patented but not copyrighted, and creative expression of ideas, which can be copyrighted. The 3-year-old Borland-Lotus case involved a menu, or user interface, in the Quattro Pro program that mimicked the functions of Lotus 1-2-3.
Borland didn’t deny copying the 1-2-3 menus and commands but argued that they were really ideas, rather than creative expressions of ideas. If such functions can be copyrighted, Borland contended, the company that first establishes a standard for almost any kind of computer product will forever have a lock on that market, and innovation will suffer. Only by allowing broad access to basic functions can creativity be preserved, Borland argued.
That view was endorsed by a prominent group of copyright law professors, who argued in a friend-of-the-court brief for a strict definition of what constituted expression in a computer software program.
William Schwartz, an intellectual property attorney at the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster, said Keeton’s ruling on Friday was not surprising in light of his previous decision in a similar case.
“This kind of decision extends copyright protection to functional elements of a program,” added Schwartz, who was not involved in the Borland case. “These are better protected by patent law, which has stricter standards and safeguards.”
But Lotus, based in Cambridge, Mass., contends that the case is straightforward: Borland copied parts of the Lotus program. “As a matter of copyright law, we think it’s pretty obvious,” said Tom Lemberg, Lotus’ general counsel. “We certainly aren’t afraid of an appeal.”
The case is scheduled to go to trial in November, when a jury will determine the scope of Borland’s infringement. Borland could face damages of anywhere from $30 million to more than $100 million for profits earned on infringing copies of the Quattro Pro program, analysts estimate.
