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Intellectual Property Keyed to Merges
Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland International
Facts
Lotus Development Corp. (Lotus) (Plaintiff) marketed a computer spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3. The program incorporated 469 menu commands, such as “Copy,” “Print,” etc. The program also enabled the user to write macros that would designate a series of commands with a single macro keystroke. Borland International (Borland) (Defendant) then released two versions of its own spreadsheet programs, called Quattro and Quattro Pro. Borland (Defendant) included a virtually identical copy of the whole 1-2-3 menu tree in its Quattro programs. It did not copy any of the Plaintiff’s underlying computer code, but it did copy the words and structures of Lotus’s (Plaintiff) menu command hierarchy so that consumers who used Borland’s (Defendant) programs would not have to relearn any commands or rewrite their Lotus (Plaintiff) macros. Plaintiff sued for copyright infringement and received a judgment in its favor. Defendant appealed, arguing that the Lotus (Plaintiff) menu command hierarchy was not copyrightable because it was a system, method of operation, process, or procedure excluded from protection by the Copyright Act.
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