1.   Lawyers said courts in recent years have generally narrowed the copyright protections for software, but the rulings are not uniform.

2.   Lotus argued that the command menus were a creative product and deserved the same copyright protection given to musical scores and books.

3.   The deposit of a thesis in a library gives no guarantee of copyright protection.

4.   Copyright protection is, by contrast, absolute.

5.   This question is of such fundamental importance because, if answered in the negative, copyright protection for computer programs would be considerably weakened.