Lawyers are great, aren't they? They can do all kinds of clever stuff. And they know what we're doing. They're watching us, monitoring every occurrence of the written word, ready to scramble into action at the slightest perceived transgression. They can turn even the tiniest trifle into a feast (I'll try to resist the temptation to add: 'even if it is only for themselves' at this point).

Sadly, most of us are ignorant of the vital role lawyers play, as the people who encounter m'learned friends are usually forbidden to discuss the matter prior to it reaching court. If it doesn't reach court and the parties settle beforehand, a normal condition of any settlement is that the protagonists don't discuss the case publicly.

As lawyers operate to a large degree outside of the public eye, the rest of us only get to see snippets of their work, which is a shame. However, there are the odd exceptions. Four years ago this week, for instance, Microsoft's legal team were victorious against rival publishers Serif, who backed down after threats of legal action had been made. Microsoft were unhappy over the cloudy packaging of Serif's PagePlus Home/Office Edition for Windows 95, which Microsoft thought made it look remarkably similar to their own MS Publisher DTP package.

Serif's Sales and Marketing Manager, Simon Rudkin, was candidly bullish, despite the defeat: "After failing to dominate the personal finance market with the aborted acquisition of Intuit, they are turning their attentions to DTP and Serif PagePlus," he thundered. "When we announced we would be developing a Windows 95 version we were sent the clouds and other artwork along with permission to use them in our packaging. Then we got a letter from Microsoft saying, 'Hey, you, get off my cloud.'"