Ashton-Tate copyright shield for dBASE line stripped by court order: ruling makes dBASE a commodity anyone can legally clone and market at will.

ASHTON-TATE COPYRIGHT SHIELD FOR DBASE LINE STRIPPED BY COURT ORDER

Ashton-Tate Corp. -- already on the ropes after a year of losses and disappointing sales -- has just been dealt a body blow by a federal judge who says the Torrance, Calif., company is not entitled to copyright protection for its flagship dBASE products.

Judge Terry Hatter Jr. of the California Central District dismissed with prejudice Ashton-Tate's 1988 copyright infringement lawsuit against Fox Software Inc. of Perryville, Ohio, saying Ashton-Tate "knowingly" misled the US Copyright Office by "repeatedly" failing to acknowledge that dBASE was derived from a program in the public domain.

Judge Hatter ruled that Ashton-Tate's dBASE III Plus is a "derivative work" from JPL/DIS, a language originally developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The ruling effectively transforms the dBASE line into a commodity by clearing the way for Fox and other competitors to clone it legally and at will. The dismissal with prejudice stops Ashton-Tate from filing a new suit in the same court.

"The court finds that Ashton-Tate's repeated failure to disclose such material information was done knowingly and with intent to deceive," Judge Hatter wrote in his decision. "The court, therefore, finds that Ashton-Tate's copyrights on its dBASE line of computer software programs are invalid as a result of its inequitable conduct."

William Lyons, who was just named Ashton-Tate's new CEO, says the company will seek reconsideration of the suit from Hatter. "We are extremely surprised," Lyons said. "We are confident that our copyrights are valid. There was no intent to mislead anyone." He says the JPL program was not mentioned in the original dBASE copyright filing because the company's attorney was not aware of it.

In fact, the origins of dBASE have always been somewhat murky. Wayne Ratliff, the line's chief creator, has conceded that he relied heavily on a mainframe database program developed at JPL, where he once worked. "I didn't borrow the code, but I borrowed the language," Ratliff said, which enabled him to come up with what has become the standard database program on IBM-compatible PCs.

Now, the court ruling "opens the floodgates," says Fox CEO David Fulton. "Borland, Microsoft and everyone else can enter and Ashton-Tate can't do a damn thing about it."

Another California software company, WordTech Systems of Orinda, says the ruling should have a positive effect on the software market. "It ensures that dBASE is not a 'single source' solution for purchasers, but rather a multi-source solution with many suppliers," says WordTech President David Miller. "It's probably even good for Ashton-Tate in the long run because it will provide the basis for a much stronger dBASE market overall in the face of strengthening competition from non-dBASE language data bases."