Last Updated on January 18, 2026 by Dave Farquhar
In 1981, a Philadelphia-area company called Franklin Computer had a good idea that didn’t work out so well for them. They decided to clone Apple computers. They ended up on the wrong end of a landmark lawsuit and yet they succeeded at reinventing themselves. In this blog post, I will go through the rise and fall and rebirth of Franklin Computer Corporation.
I’ve heard several people say Apple computers were never cloned. That’s not the case. Franklin cloned Apple and gained some notoriety for it. But there were several others as well. Perhaps over 100 of them. Apple sued most of them out of business, but some of them were able to stay on the market long enough to make a bit of a name for themselves. Some were outright copies, while others tried to extend and improve on Apple’s design. Franklin was one who tried to extend and improve.
Franklin’s origins
Franklin was founded by Barry Borden, Russ Bower, and Joel Shusterman, three experienced computer executives, in Pennsauken, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. The name invoked Benjamin Franklin, who spent much of his life in Philadelphia. Use of Franklin’s name and his likeness in its advertising was and is legally permissible, as historical figures generally don’t have a right of publicity like living people do.
And the name was fitting in another way. Franklin’s likeness is on the $100 bill, and they planned to undercut Apple’s price by a few hundred dollars.
Borden had been founder and president of a manufacturer of computer terminals, while Bower and Shusterman had worked together at Burroughs, a predecessor of Unisys. The three observed that hundreds of companies made products for Apple computers, but there was no alternative to the Apple system unit, so they became the alternative.
Franklin’s first computers
In early 1982, Franklin released its first computer, a clone of the original Apple II called the Franklin Ace 100. The Franklin Ace 1000, a clone of the Apple II+, followed in March 1982. On January 18, 1983, Franklin released the Ace 1200, an improved clone of the Apple II+.
Cloning Apple made plenty of sense at the time. The Apple II had a large software library, and their computers were more expensive than the competition.
Like IBM, and unlike Atari and Commodore, Apple built their machines using off-the-shelf components. The only thing inside the Apple II that another company couldn’t buy was the operating system ROM. This was the part that ultimately caused problems for Franklin.
The copyright issue
In 1982, the idea that computer software could be copyrighted didn’t have much legal precedence behind it. Computer companies typically did place copyright notices on their software, but no one had really established whether the notices would hold up in court.
Franklin took a chance and built a close copy of the Apple II, and simply lifted the ROM from Apple, making only a few changes to the code. It was very much a derivative work.
Some elements of the computer were patented, so Franklin’s computers weren’t an exact copy. Franklin had to work around Apple’s patents. The video display circuit and the disk controller card were two examples. The resulting design used more parts and cost more to produce, but the cost involved wasn’t ruinous. They also improved on the Apple design, giving the machine an expanded keyboard including a numeric keypad.
On May 12, 1982, Apple sued.
Franklin offered a very simple defense, consisting of three key arguments.
The computer code in question existed only in machine readable form, not in any of the forms traditionally associated with copyright at the time.
The computer code in question was a necessary components if one was looking to make a compatible computer system.
Some of the copied code did not contain any copyright message.
It took more than a year, but the case was argued March 17, 1983, with Franklin prevailing. Apple won on appeal on August 30, 1983, which became a landmark case in copyright law, establishing the precedent that computer software can indeed be copyrighted. Franklin received an injunction allowing it to continue selling computers, but a downturn in the home computer market forced Franklin into bankruptcy in 1984. This caused the cancellation of an Osborne-style luggable Apple-compatible portable Franklin had been planning.
Franklin’s emergence from bankruptcy
Franklin reorganized and emerged from bankrupcty in 1985. It continued manufacturing Apple II compatible computers until 1988, including selling them through Sears stores, and Franklin even started selling IBM compatible computers in the meantime. These later Apple compatible computers did not contain direct copies of the Apple ROMs, and as a result, the level of compatibility wasn’t as good.
The Franklin Ace 500 was a clone of the Apple IIc. The Franklin Ace 2000 series cloned the Apple IIe, but looked more like PC clones than Apples. The difference in the 2000 series was the number of internal disk drives. The 2000 had no disk drives priced at $699 while the 2100 had a single drive and cost $799 and the 2200 had dual drives and cost $949.99.
Ultimately, Apple was able to force Franklin to remove its machines from the market in 1988, including the IBM compatible PCs. This left the Laser 128 as the only remaining Apple compatible computer on the market in the United States.
Franklin’s reinvention and resurrection
In 1986, Franklin moved introduced a line of handheld specialty computers, generally priced between $70-$130. They included dictionaries, spelling aids, handheld Bibles, and language translators. The translators quickly became popular with travelers, who could use them to translate words and simple phrases between languages on the go. These devices served specialized purposes, rather than being a general-purpose portable computer like an Atari Portfolio or HP 200LX. The advantage to Franklin’s approach was that the devices could be less expensive and would be easier to use.
After departing the desktop computer market, Franklin concentrated solely on handhelds and changed its name to Franklin Electronic Publishing to reflect this change in its core business. In 2009, Franklin merged with Saunders. Saunders no longer uses the Franklin name, and smartphones have rendered Franklin’s handhelds obsolete. But Franklin’s handhelds had a good run of approximately a quarter century.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
Laser 128 was my first computer!
I remember Franklin but knew none of the history. Thanks.