Chapter 6

Chapter 6
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY


VIGNETTE
RIAA Fights Music Piracy

1. Is the RIAA's strong stand on copyright infringement helping or hurting the music recording industry?

     ANSWER : RIAA is helping to protect intellectual property rights and the First Amendment rights of artists, to perform research about the music industry and to monitor and review relevant laws, regulations and policies. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recording_Industry_Association_of_America )

2. Could an ISP's implementation and enforcement of the RIAA's multitier strategy have a negative impact on the ISP?

     ANSWER : Yes, because ISP is an organization that provide access to the Internet. The ISP must follow the RIAA because if the organization didn't follow, they will have a sanctions.

CASE 3 : Lotus v. Borland

1. Go to your school's computer lab or a PC software store and experiment with current versions of any two of the Quattro, Excel, or Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet programs. Write a brief paragraph summarizing the similarities the differences in the "look and feel" of these two programs.

     ANSWER : Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office suite. Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard similar to Lotus 1-2-3. It is commonly said to have been the forst program to use tabbed sheets. Actually, Boeing Calc had tabbed sheets earlier. It currently runs under the Windows operating system. Quattro Pro avioded the 65,536 row by 256 column spreadsheet limitations inherent to pre-2007 versions of Microsoft Excel by allowing a maximum worksheet size of one million rows 18,276 columns. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_Pro )

2. The courts took several years to reverse their initial decision and rule in favor of Borland. What impact did this delay have on the software industry? How might things have been different if Borland had received an initial favorable ruling?

     ANSWER : Lotus sought to ban any program which had a compatible and menu structure. Program commands had not been considered to be covered before, but the commands of 1-2-3 were embedded in the words of the menu displayed on the screen. 1-2-3 won its case against Mosaic Software. However when they sued Borland over its Quattro Pro spreedsheet in Lotus v. Borland, the courts ruled that it was not a copyright violation to merely have a compatible command menu or language. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3 )

3. Assume that you are the manager of Borland's software development. With the benefit of hindsight, what different decisions would you have made Quattro?

     ANSWER : If I will be a manager of Borland's software manager, i will resign in my work because if you have a big income, they will wander where you get that money.