## Facts

- Apple developed the Lisa and Macintosh graphical user interfaces (GUIs) using a “desktop” concept with windows, icons, and pull-down menus manipulated by a mouse.
- After Apple complained that Microsoft’s Windows 1.0 resembled the Macintosh interface, the parties entered a 1985 license granting Microsoft the right to use and sublicense “derivative works generated by Windows 1.0 in present and future products.”
- Microsoft later released Windows 2.03 and Windows 3.0, and Hewlett-Packard (a Microsoft licensee) released NewWave 1.0 and 3.0, which operated with Windows.
- Apple sued Microsoft and HP, alleging these later products exceeded the license and infringed Apple’s copyrighted audiovisual works covering the Lisa and Macintosh GUIs.
- Apple identified 189 alleged GUI “similarities”; the district court concluded 179 were licensed under the Windows 1.0 agreement and most of the remainder were unprotectable due to lack of originality, functionality, standardization, merger, or scènes à faire.
- The district court granted summary judgment of noninfringement for Microsoft and HP on nearly all claims, leaving only limited NewWave icon issues; all parties appealed aspects of the rulings.

## Issues

1. Whether the 1985 Windows 1.0 license covered the visual displays Apple challenged in Windows 2.03 and Windows 3.0, barring infringement claims for those displays.
2. Which asserted GUI elements were protectable expression after excluding licensed, unoriginal, functional, standard, merged, or scènes à faire material.
3. Whether infringement of the GUIs “as a whole” required proof of substantial similarity or the heightened standard of virtual identity where protection is thin.
4. Whether copyright could protect the overall “look and feel” or general “desktop metaphor” concept, as opposed to specific expressive implementations.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s summary judgments largely in favor of Microsoft and HP.
- The court agreed that the 1985 agreement licensed the Windows 1.0 visual displays, and that Windows 2.03 and 3.0 contained the same displays except for overlapping windows and certain icon changes.
- The court upheld the district court’s filtering analysis that removed licensed and unprotectable GUI features, leaving little protectable expression for Windows and only limited protectable material for NewWave.
- The court approved applying a virtual identity standard to “works as a whole” where the asserted protection was thin because most elements were unprotectable.
- Apple’s claims against Windows failed; Apple obtained only a narrow infringement ruling involving specific NewWave icons (including trash can and folder icons).

## Legal Principles

- Copyright does not confer patent-like control over the idea of a graphical user interface or the idea of a desktop metaphor.
- In GUI and software audiovisual-work cases, courts must filter out unprotectable material—such as licensed elements, functional features, standard conventions, merged expression, and scènes à faire—before comparing protectable expression.
- When a work is composed largely of unprotectable elements, the remaining protectable expression is “thin,” and infringement of the work as a whole may require virtual identity rather than ordinary substantial similarity.
- A selection and arrangement of elements may be protectable only to the extent it reflects original expression after excluding unprotectable components.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that most of Apple’s asserted GUI similarities were either licensed by the Windows 1.0 agreement or unprotectable under core copyright limits, and that any remaining thin protection required virtual identity that Apple did not show, resulting in affirmance of noninfringement for Windows and only narrow relief as to certain NewWave icons.


Apple Comput., Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994)