Friday, July 25, 2008 The Apple computer copyright case By Clint Fabiosa & Andrew Ong I Protect
IN 1982, Franklin Computer Corp. introduced the Franklin Ace 100, a clone of Apple Computer’s Apple II. Apple quickly determined that substantial portions of the Franklin ROM and operating system had been copied directly from Apple’s versions.
Months after, Apple filed a suit, citing the presence of some of the same embedded strings—such as the name “James Huston” (an Apple programmer) and “Applesoft,” on both the Apple and Franklin system disks.
Franklin admitted that it had copied Apple’s software but argued that it would have been impractical to independently write its own versions of the software and maintain compatibility, although it said it had written its own version of Apple’s copy utility and was working on its own versions of other software.
Franklin argued that because Apple’s software existed only in machine-readable form, and not in printed form, and because some of the software did not contain copyright notices, it could be freely copied and was therefore not copyrightable.
The United States Court ruled in favor of Apple stating that computer software, including operating systems and system ROMs, could be protected by copyright. Furthermore, the court postulated that copyrightability of computer programs as literary works does not depend on whether they are delivered in object code or source code, or whether they are application programs or operating systems. (Apple Computer, Inc. versus Franklin Computer Corp., 714 F.2d 1240 3d Cir. 1983)
