Protecting the Look and Feel of Computer Software
John Pinheiro · bepress Legal Repository · 1986
The computer industry is poised on the threshold of a second generation of copyright issues.The first generation centered on the copyrightability of the "languages" and codes in which software is written and read.The second generation involves determining the existence and scope of protection for the "look and feel" of computer programs under copyright law. 1 In 1980 an amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act (the "Act") expressly included computer codes or instructions within the scope of protected literary works and effectively terminated the litigation debate over copyrightability of computer code.The 1983 landmark decision of Apple Computer v.