GeezerVison

Paperback Software International Ltd. was a software company founded in 1983 by Adam Osborne to manufacture discount software such as word processor Paperback Writer and related spell checker Paperback Speller, spreadsheet VP-Planner,^[1][2] database VP-Info, and the VP-Expert artificial intelligence software. VP-Planner was developed by James Stephenson^[3] of Stephenson Software Ltd.^[4] VP-Expert was developed by Brian Sawyer.^[5] The company was headquartered in Berkeley, California.^[6]

The company was found by a United States court to have infringed on copyright for reproducing the appearance and menu system of Lotus 1-2-3 in its competing spreadsheet program,^[7][8] even though they did use different source code.^{[9][10][11][12]} The loss of this lawsuit was the main cause for the foundering of the company.

Not only was VP Planner cheaper, it was regarded by some as better.^[13] Adam Osborne's US Paperback Software business folded following lengthy litigation with Lotus Development.^[14] The litigation began in 1987, when Lotus initially won a copyright claim in 1990 against Paperback Software.^[15] Lotus sued Borland over the latter's Quattro Pro spreadsheet^[16][17] but, after six years of litigation, lost the lawsuit. The court ruled that it is not copyright infringement to use the Lotus interface as a subset, but, by then, Paperback Software had folded, and Lotus 1-2-3 had faced intense competition from Microsoft Excel.

VP-Info remains in use and continues to be available for download from public software archives, and through the Wayback Machine. VP-Info was revised and updated and re-published by SubRosa Corporation as the Shark database management application.^[18] VP-Expert was the top-selling expert systems development tool, with over 120,000 units sold and site licenses at DuPont, Kodak, and the Wharton School of Business.