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    Apple Petitions Supreme Court
01/23/95 CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA,
U.S.A. 1995 JAN 23 (NB) -- Apple
Computer Inc.'s (NASDAQ-NNM:AAPL)
ongoing copyright infringement
lawsuit against Microsoft Corp.
(NASDAQ-NNM:MSFT) and Hewlett-Packard
(NASDAQ-NNM:HWP) continues as the
Cupertino-based company has
petitioned the US Supreme Court to
hear an appeal of the case.

    Apple's position in the suit,
which has lost in two lower court
rulings, is that the copyrighted
visual displays of its Macintosh
computer are infringed upon by
Microsoft's Windows and Hewlett-
Packard's NewWave.

    The lawsuit was initially filed
in 1988 against two of Apple's
competitors. It argues that
Microsoft's Windows and HP's NewWave
infringed and illegally copied the
visual displays of the Macintosh
computer. It went to trial, where the
US District Court ruled against
Apple. Apple appealed the case, but
the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
upheld the lower court's findings in
September.

    Now Apple is arguing, in its
petition for Supreme Court review,
that the conclusion of the lower
court rulings was that only
"virtually identical" copying is
illegal. According to Apple, there is
substantial case law that
"substantially similar" to the
original also constitutes
infringement.

    Apple is also claiming the lower
courts should not have considered the
Macintosh displays as individual
symbols or other elements, and
instead should have considered the
"overall resemblance" of the
Macintosh to competing programs.

    In statements to the press, Apple
referred to this legal dispute as the
"most significant copyright case of
recent times" (relating to the
software industry), and warned that
the lower-court rulings leave US
companies vulnerable to widespread
copying by foreign companies.

    Sources at Microsoft are quoted
as saying that the company is
confident the lower court rulings
will stand. HP officials have been
quoted as saying that Apple has
resorted to "gross mis-
characterizations" of the lower court
rulings and that the rulings "do not
depart from established case law and
copyright precedents."

    HP also said the lower courts
were correct in narrowing the case to
a small number of features that were
not included in the license Apple
granted to Microsoft. According to
HP, these unlicensed features must be
"virtually identical" to the original
in order for there to be
infringement.

    Legal sources told Newsbytes
that, although they tended to agree
with the lower court rulings, "if"
the Supreme Court agrees to hear the
case, they may rule differently
because allowing the lower-court
rulings to stand might cloud future
copyright protection of computer
software.

    Overall, Apple's chances of
ultimately prevailing in the case are
considered a "long-shot," both in
terms of getting the Supreme Court to
agree to hear the case, and for
getting the lower court rulings
overturned.  G. Gervaise Davis III,
an attorney in Monterey, California
who has followed the case was quoted
as saying,  "The time is ripe for a
Supreme Court review of a major
copyright case, but this is not the
case."

    (Nick Anis/19950123/Press
Contact: G. Gervaise Davis, III, 408-
649-1122, Apple Computer Inc., Betty
Taylor, 408-996-1010)


    Stratton Seeks Judgment in
Prodigy Suit 02/06/95 NEW YORK, NEW
YORK, U.S.A., 1995 FEB 6 (NB) --
Investment banking firm Stratton
Oakmont has asked for a partial
summary judgment in a $200 million
libel suit against Prodigy Services
Company. The firm and its president,
Daniel Porush, want the court to
declare that Prodigy was the legal
publisher of remarks its members made
on the Prodigy Money Talk bulletin
board.

    The move is sure to provoke wide
comment on bulletin boards and on-
line services, where members heatedly
resist prior reviews of their
publicly posted messages.

    Prodigy spokesperson Brian Ek
told Newsbytes that calling Prodigy
the publisher of remarks made by its
members on an open, public bulletin
board is "not reasonable." He said
Prodigy intends to fight the suit as
far as necessary.

    "We believe the suit is
groundless, and makes many
conclusions about the role of on-line
services that are just simply wrong,"
he said during an interview. "Their
release states that the summary
requested judgment is that an on-line
service, Prodigy in particular, is a
publisher. As anyone knows in the
area of bulletin boards, nothing
could be further from the truth. With
bulletin boards, the content is
created by third parties and none of
it is created by the on-line
service."

    He added that an on-line service
is more like a book store than a
publisher, in that regard. A book
store owner is generally held
responsible for content on its
shelves only if someone complains. At
that point a book store is expected
to review content and, if
appropriate, remove offending matter
from the shelves.

    In a press release, Stratton
Oakmont characterized the remarks
made by Prodigy members as "false and
defamator." The release said Prodigy
had admitted, in public statements,
that it claims the right to exercise
"editorial control" over message
content on its bulletin boards. It
said that Prodigy employees confirmed
in depositions that the service
exercises editorial control through
its bulletin board editors and
message screening software.

    The firm noted that Prodigy has
published content guidelines by which
notes are judged, and named Charles
Epstein, editor of Money Talk, as
Prodigy's "agent" for the alleged
acts and omissions. The motion says
that Epstein, in a deposition,
"admitted that the notes posted about
Stratton violated Prodigy's Content
Guidelines and 'should have been
removed.'"

    In his conversation with
Newsbytes, Prodigy's Ek replied:
"What's very odd about this case is
that, with a bulletin board, there
are three ways to remedy a problem.
One is, if you see a note that you
disagree with, you jump in and say
it's wrong. Stratton did not do that.
Again, if you see something that
violates the Guidelines, there is a
button that allows you to send a note
to the bulletin board managers to
have them go look at it. That was not
done.

    "And if you are not a Prodigy
member, if you're a company like
Stratton Oakmont, there's a third
option. You pick up the phone and say
'There's something on the board that
troubles us, Could you take a look at
it and take it down.' That was not
done."

    Ek said Prodigy first heard about
the problem when the law suit
paperwork arrived a few months ago.
He said the service is "puzzled"
about why it wasn't resolved before
it ever got to court: "If you have a
problem with something, why not just
pick up the phone?"

    He added that the screening
software essentially only filters
notes for obscenities, not for
content, before publicly posting
them.

    "Not only does the service not
write what's up there, but there's no
way that the service could be expert
enough to even vouch for the validity
of everything up there. Every day our
members post 75,000 new bulletin
board notes in over 1,000 topics.
There is no physical way either for
our staff to read all those notes or
for us to have a staff that is expert
in all those topics plus all their
sub-topics. It just can't be done,
and it's not reasonable to expect
it."

    Stratton Oakmont's attorney,
Jacob H. Zamansky of Finkelstein
Bruckman Wohl Most & Rothman, was not
immediately available for comment.

    (Craig Menefee/19950206/Press
Contact: Jacob H. Zamansky, Esq. of
Finkelstein Bruckman Wohl Most &
Rothman, 212-754-3138; Brian Ek,
Prodigy, 914-448-8811)