 Part
One
Windows
1.0 was considered buggy, crude and slow. This rough start was made worse
by a threatened lawsuit from Apple Computer. In September 1985, Apple lawyers
warned Microsoft that they felt Windows 1.0 infringed on Apple copyrights
and patents, and that Microsoft might have stolen Apple trade secrets.
(Windows had similar drop-down menus, tiled windows and mouse support.)
Bill
Gates and Microsoft's head counsel, Bill Neukom, decided to make an offer
to license Apple's operating-system features. Apple agreed, and a contract
was drawn up. Here's the clincher: Microsoft wrote the licensing agreement
to include use of Apple features in Windows 1.0 and all future Microsoft
software programs. As it turned out, this move by Bill Gates was as brilliant
as his decision to buy QDOS from Seattle Computer Products and his convincing
IBM to let Microsoft keep the licensing rights to MS-DOS. (You can read
all about those smooth moves in our feature on MS-DOS.)
Windows
1.0 floundered on the market until January 1987, when a Windows-compatible
program called Aldus
PageMaker 1.0 was released. PageMaker was the first WYSIWYG
desktop-publishing program for the PC. Later that year, Microsoft released
a Windows-compatible spreadsheet called Excel.
Other popular and useful software like Microsoft Word and Corel Draw helped
promote Windows, but Microsoft realized the product still needed further
development.
On
December 9, 1987, Microsoft released a much-improved Windows 2.0 that made
a PC look a bit more like a MacIntosh
computer. Windows 2.0 had icons to represent programs and files, improved
support for expanded-memory hardware and windows that could overlap. Apple
Computer saw a resemblance and filed a 1988 lawsuit against Microsoft,
alleging that Microsoft had broken the 1985 licensing agreement.
In
their defense, Microsoft claimed that the licensing agreement actually
gave them the right to use Apple features. After a four-year court case,
Microsoft won. Apple claimed that Microsoft had infringed on 170 of their
copyrights. The courts said that the licensing agreement gave Microsoft
the rights to use all but nine of the copyrights, and Microsoft later convinced
the courts that the remaining copyrights should not be covered by copyright
law. Bill Gates claimed that Apple had taken some of its ideas from the
graphical user interface developed by Xerox for Xerox's Alto and Star computers.
| 6/1/93: Microsoft announces that Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the U.S.
District Court of Northern California ruled today in Microsoft's favor
in the Apple vs. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard copyright suit. The judge
granted Microsoft's and Hewlett-Packard's motions to dismiss the last remaining
copyright infringement claims against Microsoft Windows 2.03 and 3.0, as
well as, the HP NewWave.
-From the Microsoft Timeline
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What
would have happened if Microsoft had lost the lawsuit? Microsoft Windows
might never have become the dominant operating system that it is today.
"Microsoft become the top software vendor in 1988 and never
looked back..." - Microsoft
Continue...
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