Ashton-Tate Corp. v. Ross
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
916 F.2d 516 (1990)
- Written by Jenny Perry, JD
Facts
Richard Ross (defendant) and Randy Wigginton collaborated on the development of a spreadsheet program for the Apple Macintosh computer. Ross worked on the engine or computational component of the program, and Wigginton worked on the user interface. At one point during their collaboration, Ross gave Wigginton a list of commands that he thought the user interface should contain; however, Wigginton wrote all the code for the user-interface part of the program. A few months later, Wigginton went to work for Ashton-Tate Corporation (Ashton) (plaintiff), where he continued to work on the interface. Eventually, Wigginton’s user interface was combined with a computational engine that Ashton owned, and together they became a spreadsheet program released by Ashton called Full Impact. Meanwhile, Ross continued to work on his program, including a user interface to combine with his engine, and Ross published MacCalc. Ross demanded that Ashton compensate him for his contribution to Full Impact. Ashton then filed a complaint for declaratory relief, seeking to establish that Ross had no rights in Full Impact, and Ross counterclaimed for copyright infringement. The district court found that Ashton was the sole owner of the copyright in the user interface, and Ross appealed.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Choy, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 832,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,500 briefs, keyed to 994 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.