Trouble is there is no consistency in the rulings. Hardware decisions
in general are mirrors of software cases. Hardware reverse
engineering tends to be legal. But with software they use Clean
programmer, Dirty programmer. In other words you can write a program
exactly like another, if you can prove you never saw the other
program. If you saw the similar program you are dirty. The weird
thing is your Marketing people can see the other program and tell you
what to do. That's legal.
Steve B.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Drew Eckhardt
> Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 10:17 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT
>
>
> In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> >Examiners at the European Patent Office http://www.epo.org tell me:
> > Reverse engineering is legal in Europe, Illegal in USA.
>
> Back in the early nineties, Nintendo sued some one in America
> for reverse engineering the circuit included in every cartridge and
> using what they learned to sell cartridges without buying the
> protection chip from them.
>
> Nintendo lost.
>
> If you dig deeper, I believe you'll find cases from the
> mainframe era
> with similar rulings.
>
>
>
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