Here is my story of his first major absurd unfounded lawsuit.
Back in the early 1970s I visited the mother lode of the modern computer. It was Xerox Parc and the man who ran the operation was Bill English. Bill and his wife Roberta were friends of mine.
About 15 years ago I had dinner with Bill and Roberta. At the time of the dinner there were the remnants of a 1988 lawsuit about computer desktop page design. The suit was between Apple and Microsoft. The lawsuit was about 9 years old at the time. Apple claimed that Microsoft had copied the ‘look and feel’ of the home computer screen from Apple, which it had. The important truth was that Apple had copied the ‘look and feel’ from what Steve had seen at Xerox Park and Apple had somewhat of a license from Xerox.
At the dinner with the Englishes, Bill said he had just agreed to go on the board of Sun. I knew most of the long history and I pointed out to him that he was the perfect person to bring an end to the law suit by getting Xerox to license the original material to Sun.
Bill was the person who actually ran the shop (Xerox Park) that created the ‘look and feel’ and everyone in Silicon Valley knew it. All Bill had to do, as a Sun Board of Directors member, was to say that he supported Sun getting rights to his work at Xerox Parc and that the lawsuit should be dropped. It was.