AT&T vs. CSS (PC/Tools)

[Wolf N. Paul]

In article <403 at mancol.UUCP> samperi at mancol.UUCP (Dominick Samperi) writes:
>The May issue of UNIX Review reports that AT&T won an out-of-court
>settlement in its suit aginst Custom Software Systems, Inc. The
>suit claimed that PC/Tools and PC/Spell, both marketed by CSS,
>"used aspects of UNIX," but CSS did not purchase a license from
>AT&T. Does this mean that it is illegal to market versions of
>the standard tools (cp, mv, tar, etc.) for DOS or for other
>operating systems, or enhanced versions of these tools for UNIX,
>without first buying a license from AT&T?

I think we can safely assume that "aspects of UNIX" here refers to rather
substantial amounts of UNIX source code, or at least code resembling the
real thing sufficiently closely to reasonably assume that it was derived
from it.

The reason I say this is that there have been other, commercially more
significant, UNIX-lookalikes which AT&T did not bother. Also, when PC/VI
first made its appearance, a friend of mine in the Boston area told me
he had heard from a friend who had access to both UNIX and PC/VI source
code that the sources resembled each other so closely, down to flaws in
the coding style, that he was conviced PC/VI was a rip-off.

>Does AT&T have exclusive rights to use these utility names? Would it
>still be illegal to market tools with similar capabilities that are
>named differently?

If AT&T had exclusive rights to these utility names, MS would be in trouble
over DOS -- cd, mkdir, rmdir etc. Again, there are many other packages
out there using these names for functionally similar programs without being
bothered by AT&T that I don't think the name or functional definition is
the issue.

>What exactly does "used aspects of UNIX" mean anyway????

As I said, I'm sure they obtained access to UNIX source and did straight
ports, or disguised ports (i.e. change variable names, etc.), or somthing
else of similar nature.
-- 
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