[.ca] Software and Intellectual Property Protection Software ... (ISBN 0899309747)

Confusing and confused book at exorbitant cost:
If one wishes a confusing and confused book, at an exorbitant cost \o$57.95 + S & H for 137 pp + 67 pp of appendices and indices = 42.3 cents per page of text!\c concerning an intellectually stimulating melieu, then and only then, is Galler's monograph a must purchase. In short, one cannot recommend that any university or public library acquire it for its collection. However, it is possible that ignorant judges rendering ignorant decisions might cite this monograph as "expert" opinion. The foreward states that: "the power of clear statement is the ultimate gift of the great teacher." Galler falls far short of meeeting that criterion. In reviewing this work, one must start with the premise that Intellectual Property \oIP\c, like artifical intelligence, is an oxymoron. In legal and economic terms, property is a tangible that can be possessed by only one person at one moment in time. In other words, Property represents a zero-sum game: If I possess it, then you don't. IP on the other hand can be possessed by the many without diminuation to any other would-be possessor. A user of WINDOWS 2000, the illegitimate descendent of DOS 4.0 and TOPVIEW, does not interfere with any other user of WIN. Thus IP is a collection of legal aplets which are used to create scarcity and exclusivity for their putative owners. The protection concept subsumed by IP does not "protect" the customer from anything. The protection furnished by IP to the putative owners is evanescent, e.g. IP, at best, is a hunting license for future lawsuits by a deep pocket litigant. One is tempted to tell Galler how he should have written the book, since the overall format is promising if competantly developed. The notion of comparing copyright, patent, and trade secret objects within a small universe of 32 court decisions merits instant approval. The individual chapter headings on substantial similarities, reverse engineering, the merger defense, "look and feel", and the doctrine of "equivilancies" under patent law, all merit thoughtful and insightful treatment by someone who is at home with legal constructs and technological palaver. A book that defines technological terms for the legal persona and legal constructs for the technological would be valuable. Galler himself is confused by his own constructs of "textual", "behavioral", "static", and "dynamic" structures and this reviewer remains confused by Galler's exegesis on technological metaphors and legal metaphors. There is no discussion in this book of the Economic issues of IP. One looks in vain for any mention of antitrust, venture financing, royalties, license fees, blanket licensing agreements, and other profit & loss issues. Galler does not deal with the legal/economic tensions inherent in using multiple IP constructs: adhesion contracts + hardware patents + copyright + trade secret, which erect a razor wire fence around IP technology. One also notes that it is rare in our present technology for the human creator of IP to be the legal owner thereof. Galler's chapters seem to hint at an historical imperative that is quite Hegelian in its implications: if a company wins an IP lawsuit, then that company's IP products and services will not survive. If Apple had lost its lawsuit to remove the garbage can from GEM's TOPVIEW, then the Apple OS might be the industry standard instead of the DOS 7.0 /WIN 95 /"BOB" OS. Microsoft lost its IP lawsuit with IBM over OS2, and WIN95 is a de facto standard. IBM lost its IP battle with Phoenix over BIOS, and Phoenix is now the de facto standard. IBM won its battle with Antitrust, and is now a nonentity on the desktop with overpriced mediocre hardware that relies on WIN98 rather than OS/2 3.0 \oaka WIN NT and/or WINDOWS 2000\c. Microsoft's victory over the Justice Dept. on the bundling of OS for OEMs appears Pyrrhic in nature, even though BOB didn't make it from a wedding present to a viable interface.