Inside Cyberspace

Young, hip Mosaic Communications was supposed to have the edge in the race to improve on NCSA Mosaic -- the Internet "browser" that made the complex computer network surprisingly easy to use. After all, the Silicon Valley start-up hired away most of the hackers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who had written the original program, and their new version -- Mosaic Netscape -- is suddenly the hottest thing on the Net. So why are AT& T, IBM and Digital Equipment licensing a competing version from low-profile Spyglass? Because Spyglass has something Mosaic never bothered to get -- a license from the university. School spokesfolks say they are trying to avoid a lawsuit, but add, "We're obligated to our licensees to protect our intellectual property."