Wired Article, On Jan 19, 1983 Apple unveils Lisa

Maybe Xerox's lawyers were smarter and recognized that a 'look and feel' lawsuit was stupid. (The fact that later decisions legitimized the 'look and feel' theory to some extent does not change my opinion that it is stupid precedent.) After all, think about the Intel vs. NEC suit over the V20. NEC created a chip that "looked like a duck, quacked like a duck, etc." NEC was found faultless because they did not copy Intel microcode or masks: they built their own "duck" that looked and quacked the same way. In even less guileful fashion, both Apple and Microsoft took ideas arguably available from Xerox's publications and demonstrations and built their own products upon them. I have always considered Apple's suit against Microsoft to have been a nuisance suit pure and simple, but then IANAL.... -- Ian