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Brown Bag Software v. Symantec Corp. is an intellectual property law case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed-in-part and vacated-in-part the previous ruling of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Brown Bag Software sued Symantec Corporation and John L. Friend, an individual software developer for Softworks Development, for copyright infringement and several state law claims regarding the similarity of Symantec Corporation's and Brown Bag Software's computer outlining programs. The District Court rejected Brown Bag Software's copyright infringement claims and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed these rulings. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted the lack of a decision regarding Brown Bag's state law claims and returned the case back to the District Court for a ruling. The District Court later rejected Brown Bag's state law claims, finalizing all claims in this case. == Background == John L. Friend was an independent computer program developer for Softworks Development. Friend was inspired by Symantec's original ThinkTank outlining program and created his own outlining program called PC-Outline. In 1987, Friend sold ownership of PC-Outline's intellectual property to Brown Bag Software under two stipulations. First, Friend could not develop a program that would infringe Brown Bag's newly acquired copyright of PC-Outline. Second, Friend had a non-exclusive right to use several pages of PC-Outline's source code. In the same year, Friend developed and sold another outlining program called GrandView to Symantec. Symantec rebranded this acquisition as an upgrade to its computer outlining programs, ThinkTank and MORE. On June 8, 1988, Brown Bag Software sued Symantec in federal district court for infringing Brown Bag's copyright and trademark rights.〔Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal (Comm/Ent), Vol. 15, Issue 3 (1992-1993), pp. 571-604 Russo, Jack; Nafziger, Jamie 15 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. 571 (1992-1993)〕 Brown Bag alleged that Symantec and Friend copied several of PC-Outline's features including: basic computer GUI concepts, the idea of an outlining program, the use of pull-down windows, and the color scheme of the program. Furthermore, Brown Bag alleged that Symantec had falsely advertised its GrandView program as an upgrade over Brown Bag's PC-Outline program. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brown Bag Software v. Symantec Corp.」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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