and to reward Borland in turn for making a better product. If Borland has not made a better
product, then customers will remain with Lotus anyway. ...To call the menu a “method of operation” is, in the common use of those words, a defensible
position. After all, the purpose of the menu is not to be admired as a work of literary or pictorial
art. It is to transmit directions from the user to the computer, i.e., to operate the computer. The
menu is also a “method” in the dictionary sense because it is a “planned way of doing
something,” an “order or system,” and (aptly here) an “orderly or systematic arrangement,
sequence or the like.”- General ideas, e.g. for entertainment, are not protected by
copyright
Green v. Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand [1989] 3 N.Z.L.R. 18
(New Zealand: Judicial Committee of the Privy Council)[The plaintiff Green devised the format for a popular British television talent
show, in which he starred, called “Opportunity Knocks”. He sued a New
Zealand television channel which copied the format of the programme for its
own talent show. The plaintiff claimed that he had copyright in the dramatic
format of the show: its title, the use of the catch-phrases “For [name of
competitor], Opportunity Knocks”, “This is your show folks, and I do mean you”,
and “Make your mind up time”, the use of a device called a “clapometer” to
measure audience reaction to competitors’ performances and the use of
sponsors to introduce competitors.]LORD BRIDGE for the Court:It is stretching the original use of the word “format” a long way to use it metaphorically to
describe the features of a television series such as a talent, quiz or game show which is presented
in a particular way, with repeated but unconnected use of set phrases and with the aid of
particular accessories. [The difficulty is to say] that a number of allegedly distinctive features of
a television series can be isolated from the changing material presented in each separate
performance (the acts of the performers in the talent show, the questions and answers in the quiz
show, etc.) and identified as an “original dramatic work”...The protection which copyright gives creates a monopoly and “there must be certainty in the
subject-matter of such monopoly in order to avoid injustice to the rest of the world” ... The
subject-matter of the copyright claimed for the “dramatic format” of “Opportunity Knocks” is
conspicuously lacking in certainty. Moreover, ... a dramatic work must have sufficient unity to
be capable of performance and that the features claimed as constituting the “format” of a
television show, being unrelated to each other except as accessories to be used in the presentation
of some other dramatic or musical performance, lack that essential characteristic.- Ideas may nevertheless be protected through means other
than copyright
Fraser v. Thames Television Ltd [1984] 1 Q.B. 44 (U.K.: High Court)[A girls’ rock group called “Rock Bottom” and their manager (one Fraser)
developed a partly autobiographical idea for a television series, in which they(^20) would star and which would depict a girls’ rock group, how it was formed, and