Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland Intern., Inc., Civ. A. No. 90-11662-K.

• Decision Date: 31 July 1992
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 90-11662-K.
• Citation: 799 F. Supp. 203
• Parties: LOTUS DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, Plaintiff, v. BORLAND INTERNATIONAL, INC., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

799 F. Supp. 203

LOTUS DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, Plaintiff, v. BORLAND INTERNATIONAL, INC., Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 90-11662-K.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

July 31, 1992.

James C. Burling, Jeffrey B. Rudman, Hale & Dorr, Boston, Mass., Henry B. Gutman, Kerry L. Konrad, O'Sullivan, Graev & Karabell, New York City, for plaintiff.

Laura Steinberg, Sullivan & Worcester, Boston, Mass., Lynn H. Pasahow, McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, San Francisco, Cal., David L. Hayes, Mitchell Zimmerman, Fenwick & West, Palo Alto, Cal., Peter Erich Gelhaar, Donnelly, Conroy & Gelhaar, Boston, Mass., Gary L. Reback, Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, Palo Alto, Cal., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

KEETON, District Judge.

By Memorandum and Order of March 20, 1992, the court dismissed the parties' motions for summary judgment in this copyright infringement action and invited new motions compatible with rulings therein announced. Each party has renewed its motion for summary judgment and filed further submissions (Docket Nos. 168-190).^* A hearing on these motions was held on May 19, 1992, and additional submissions were filed after that hearing.

The reader may find background information in two earlier documents issued by this court: the first, the Opinion in a related case involving the Lotus 1-2-3 program at issue here, Lotus Dev. Corp. v. Paperback Software Int'l, 740 F.Supp. 37 (D.Mass.1990), and, the second, a Memorandum issued in this case, Lotus Dev. Corp. v. Borland Int'l Inc., 788 F.Supp. 78 (D.Mass.1992) (Memorandum and Order of March 20).

In the Memorandum and Order of March 20, I concluded that Lotus had failed to frame adequately its contentions with respect to the infringement of elements of its user interface less than the whole interface. In its renewed motion for summary judgment, Lotus asserts specifically that Borland has copied expressive elements of the 1-2-3 interface, including "menu commands," "menu structure," "long prompts," and "keystroke sequences." Although Lotus continues to argue that its entire user interface beyond dispute was copied, I adhere to the view that on the present record a reasonable jury could find that Borland copied less than the whole 1-2-3 user interface. Nevertheless, based upon the parties' most recent submissions, I conclude that, beyond genuine dispute, Fed.R.Civ.P. 56, Borland copied parts of the 1-2-3 user interface. For the reasons stated herein, I deny Borland's motion for summary judgment and grant, in part, Lotus' motion for summary judgment.

I. DEFINITIONS AND PREMISES

The Memorandum of March 20 presented for possible use in this case the following form of jury interrogatory concerning the extent to which Borland copied the Lotus 1-2-3 user interface in creating its Quattro programs:

Question 1

(a) Do you find that the Quattro Pro user interface as a whole was copied from the Lotus 1-2-3 user interface as a whole?

___ YES ___ NO

(b) Do you find that the part of the Quattro Pro user interface called the "emulation interface" (also called the "1-2-3 compatible interface") as a whole was copied from the Lotus 1-2-3 user interface as a whole?

___ YES ___ NO

(c) If NO, do you find that some part, and, if so, which of the following part or parts of the Lotus 1-2-3 user interface were copied into some part of the Quattro Pro "emulation interface" (also called the "1-2-3 compatible interface")?

                         (1) The menu commands     __________YES  ___________NO
                         (2) The menu structure    __________YES  ___________NO
                         (3) The command sequence  __________YES  ___________NO
                         (4) The long prompts      __________YES  ___________NO
                         (5) The macro facility    __________YES  ___________NO
                

The Memorandum of March 20 noted that it was not clear that Lotus was making a claim of the sort addressed in part (a) of proposed Question 1 and that ambiguity remained regarding the meaning of the terms used in parts (c)(1)-(5). Lotus has in its recent submissions clarified its contentions.

First, Lotus acknowledges that the "native" modes of the Quattro programs have user interfaces that differ from that of 1-2-3. Thus, the question posed in part (a) of Question 1 is not in genuine dispute.

Second, Lotus has defined, as it uses them, the terms "menu commands," "menu structure," "keystrokes," "keystroke sequences," "long prompts," and "macro language."

In general, except for some blending of argument with definitions, the parties appear not to be in dispute about the meaning of these and other terms defined below. The definitions that I use in this Memorandum, for the purpose of explaining and analyzing the contentions of the parties, are consistent with the submissions of both Lotus and Borland, as I understand them.

"Command" refers to an abbreviated description of a direction that a user of a software program (whether Lotus 1-2-3, Borland's Quattro Pro, or another program) may invoke to cause some operation to be performed.

"Menu" refers to a display on the computer monitor of a limited number of commands available to the user at a given moment.

"Menu command" refers to a command that appears in a menu. In Lotus 1-2-3, a menu command is ordinarily a single English-language word. In rare instances, it is instead a representation of an English-language pronunciation (such as "Xtract"). Menu commands are displayed on the computer...