Why didn't Apple sue Commodore over the Amiga's GUI?

Question

Famously, in the late 1980's Apple sued Microsoft over the "look and feel" of Windows 2.x. The claim was that Windows breached Apple's copyright by being too similar to the Mac UI. Apple ultimately lost, but as the Wikipedia page on the subject explains some of the contested elements were:

• The existence of windows on the screen
• Rectangular windows which could be resized, overlap and have title bars

The Amiga's Workbench and intuition.library provided all of these features, along with many other elements and concepts shared with the Mac UI. These were demonstrated in 1984 and released publicly in 1985, yet Windows 2.0 didn't appear until late 1987.

So why didn't Apple sue Commodore/Amiga for the same breach of "look and feel"? Was it because Commodore was simply beneath Apple's radar at the time, or was the Apple vs Microsoft more about politics than technology?

Answer 1

It may have been a combination of hubris and legal prudence on Commodore's part; per Commodore: The Amiga Years:

The Amiga designers wanted something more original than [Berkeley Softworks'] proposal. "This may have been unfair, but part of it was we thought GEOS looked too much like a Mac; a color Mac before there was a color Mac," says [Dale] Luck. "It was felt that we could do something a lot better."

... The Amiga employees were careful not to put themselves at risk of a lawsuit over the GUI. "We started out passing around design docs. The actual implementation was done completely behind the walls so that there was no knowledge of what anyone else had done," says [RJ] Mical.

Because of this policy, Amiga did not not receive any infringement lawsuits based on their GUI. "Not a one; not from anyone, ever," says Mical. "I attribute that mostly to the fact that once I decided that I needed to do a user interface, I slammed the door and drew the blinds and invented it completely and entirely on my own. I didn't look at any other computer system through the whole period. We wanted it to be as clean-room as possible."

i.e.

• there was a conscious decision not to look too much like a Mac, and instead to aim higher; and
• once that decision was made, development occurred with as little in the way of external influences as they could manage.

As to the theory suggested elsewhere in a comment, I do not think it was that Commodore was not on Apple's radar — the Apple II was Apple's cash cow for longer than the C64 was Commodore's and they will have been aware of the competition. There's also some staff crossover; e.g. Ron Nicholson, a hardware designer, has his signature inside the cases of both the Macintosh 128k and the Amiga 1000†.

Commodore also once tried to hire Jean-Louis Gassée, who famously helped to oust Steve Jobs while at Apple and then later failed to sell his BeOS back to them; per Amazing Computing, November 1996 via Commodore: The Final Years:

Gassée both admired and feared Commodore Amiga during his tenure at Apple. "We were really scared of the Amiga," he says. "Fortunately, Irving Gould helped Apple by running Commodore into the ground."

† He's also a member here so perhaps he can provide more colour.

Answer 2

While some lawyers do occasionally file lawsuits based mainly on their targets having "deep pockets", like Microsoft had, this is not generally successful. In order for a typical corporate lawsuit to gain any traction in the court, the plaintiff must provide sufficient "standing".

In order to establish standing, Apple sought to convince the court that Microsoft's actions violated an earlier licensing agreement for Macintosh technology that was inked between Apple and Microsoft in 1985. Furthermore, HP was included in the lawsuit because it was alleged Microsoft had sub-licensed Windows technology to HP for NewWave.

The litigation arose out of a dispute whether an earlier version of Microsoft's software, Windows 1.0, infringed Apple copyrights. Microsoft and Apple sought to put that dispute to rest by an agreement on November 22, 1985 ("1985 Agreement"). By that agreement, Apple granted to Microsoft a non-exclusive license of the audiovisual displays in Windows 1.0. As the court found on March 20, 1989, however, the 1985 Agreement is not a complete defense to this action, because it was limited to the visual displays in Windows 1.0 and did not cover displays in Windows 2.03 that were not in the prior work. Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 709 F. Supp. 925, 930 (N.D.Cal.1989).

Given that no such prior licensing agreements existed between Apple and Commodore-Amiga, it is apparent that the same complaint could not be brought against them by Apple. If Apple wanted to file subsequent lawsuits against Commodore, and others who used similar GUI elements to the Macintosh, they really needed a victory against Microsoft and HP first, which would set a precedent about copyright protections applying to the Mac GUI. After all, copyright was the underlying basis for these Apple claims, not stronger protections, such as registered U.S. patents.

Since Apple ultimately lost the copyright argument, there was never any point to reviving this case by going after other alleged "infringers", such as Commodore. The court had already ruled no infringement had taken place by Microsoft, so Commodore was inoculated against such a claim.

Answer 3

Bill Hart (Amiga investor and director) told the story of Steve Jobs visiting Amiga in 1983.

On the way out, Jobs said, “I don’t see anything here that would ever be a threat to the Macintosh.”

So this could be easy and straight answer to original question.

Link to Bill Hart talk (2015.): https://youtu.be/GszY6dgSGTg

Answer 4

In order to lead a proper lawsuit against "stealing" software concepts, you need to have proof that the defendant actually had access to your code base - That was easy for Apple in the case of MS - As MS was developing Apple software in the very early stage of development of the Macintosh and thus had access to Apple internal code, there was actually at least a theoretical possibility that software concepts were being transferred from MacOS into Windows.

That never happened with the Amiga.