On June 28, 1990, an important decision was rendered with regard to a lawsuit between Lotus Development Corporation, the creator of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, and Paperback International, the creator of the VP-Planner spreadsheet. Lotus had sued Paperback International for infringement of its copyright on Lotus 1-2-3. Paperback had copied the entire menu structure of the Lotus 1-2-3 program. The manual of the VP-Planner even contained the following statement: VP-Planner is designed to work like Lotus, 1-2-3, keystroke for keystroke . . .. VP Planners worksheet is a feature-for-feature work alike for the 1-2-3. It does micros. It has the same command tree. It allows the same kind of calculations, the same kind of numerical information. Everything 1-2-3 does, VP-Planner does. Paperback, in turn, alleged that only the part of a computer program written in some computer language, such as C, is copyrightable. It argued that the more graphic parts of a program, such as the overall organization of the program, the structure of the programs command system, the menu, and the general presentation of information on the screen, are not copyrightable. Lotus countered by arguing that copyright protection extends to all elements of a computer program that embody original expression.

Question: Could Lotus 1-2-3 be protected by a copyright and patent? Why or why not?