Gatha Entrepreneurship And Historical Piracy Ki
I am an avid reader who obsesses over novels and…
Hearing about historical “piracy” in entrepreneurship, one can only imagine Johnny Depp in the Caribbean. Piracy with eye patches may be cool, but piracy has taken a severe turn in recent years resulting in several copyright issues. The following is an example of one such case, which we now call “historical piracy in entrepreneurship”.
#AppleVSMicrosoft
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This conflict arose from a disagreement over who designed the Graphical User Interface (GUI).
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What is GUI? A Graphical User Interface is a visual way to interact with the system like icons, menus, etc.
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Although Microsoft helped develop Macintosh, Jean Louis Gasse, who took over Steve Jobs, refused Microsoft to use that software.
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Apple agreed to license some parts of its GUI to Microsoft Windows 1.0.
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But, Microsoft made changes to Windows 2.0, adding features of Macintosh GUI.
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Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement on March 17, 1988, after Windows 2.0 was released.
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Apple listed that 189 GUI elements were pirated (so began the historical piracy in entrepreneurship). The court decided that 179 of these elements were already licensed to Microsoft for Windows 1.0.
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The battle went on for eight years after the court ruled in favour of Microsoft on August 24, 1993.
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This historical piracy in entrepreneurship reached its end, but it took years of negotiations.
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To the detriment of Netscape, Apple made Internet Explorer as its default browser. Microsoft, committed to its development, came with Microsoft Office for Mac over the next five years. In addition, Microsoft purchased $150 million of nonvoting Apple stock.
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FACT: Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple in the middle of this historical piracy in entrepreneurship. It claimed that Apple had disobeyed copyrights Xerox held on its GUI. Talk about irony, right?
It takes a lot of hard work to build something and just a fraction of seconds for someone to disrupt the whole process. Piracy is not a joke and should not be taken lightly. What are your views on this case of historical piracy in entrepreneurship? Do you think that Microsoft actually pirated Apple’s GUI elements?
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I am an avid reader who obsesses over novels and fictional characters, with a passion for writing. I believe in the saying, "The Pen is mightier than the sword" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.