Apple added additional claims to the suit when Microsoft released Windows 3.0.

After oral arguments, the court insisted on an analysis of specific GUI elements that Apple claimed were infringements.

[8] The district court ruled that it would require a standard of "virtual identity" between Windows and the Macintosh at trial for Apple to prove copyright infringement.

The appeals court almost entirely affirmed the ruling of the district court, establishing that, "almost all the similarities spring either from the license or from basic ideas and their obvious expression... illicit copying could occur only if the works as a whole are virtually identical.

Apple admittedly licensed many of its representations from Xerox, and copyright protection only extends to the original expression.

However, the case did establish that the analytic dissection (rather than the general "look and feel") of a user interface is vital to any copyright decision on such matters.

Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer its default browser, to the detriment of Netscape.