Amiga Patents (Was Longest running user group in history?)

From: Eric J. Korpela <korpela_at_ellie.ssl.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sun Apr 22 13:19:16 2001

> > > This brings to mind the fact that (at least the first of) the
> > > Amiga patents should be expiring within the next two or three years.
> > > This should mean something to Amiga hobbyists, shouldn't it? I've
> > > seen people implementing 6502 cores in FPGAs these days. Surely the
> > > Amiga custom chips would be good candidates for similar treatment when
> > > Gateway no longer has the right to sue somebody to make them quit.
> > > (Gateway still owns the patents even though they no longer own the
> > > Amiga trademark. What they plan to do with them in the next couple
> > > years -- aside from keeping others from making good use of them -- is
> > > beyond me.)
> >
> > Aren't the designs, which are what really matter here, still copyrighted?
>
> Copyright doesn't preclude other designs which perform equivalent tasks.
> A reverse engineered version of a custom chip is perfectly legal under
> copyright law despite recent attempts by congress to make it illegal.

I know its bad form to reply to your own posts, but given that this is an
international forum, I should point out that I am fairly sure reverse
engineering is also protected in most of Europe and Asia. So far as I
know, the US is the only country that has been in the business of trying
to limit it.

Eric
Received on Sun Apr 22 2001 - 13:19:16 BST