DEC blanket permission was: Re: Scanning out-of-print books and documentation

From: John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com>
Date: Wed Apr 12 17:11:02 2000

On Wed, Apr 12, 2000 at 10:01:46AM -0700, Chuck McManis wrote:
> Actually I wouldn't be suprised if both were covered. The VLC manual
> because DEC/Compaq has end-of-lifed the VAX and there will be no more, and
> the MSCP manual because DEC/Compaq continues to hold the patent on the
> implementation and anyone attempting to use the information to build MSCP
> systems would be subject to the patent restrictions anyway.

Unless I seriously misunderstand things, the MSCP patent is not long for
this world anyway, since its 17th birthday is 13 months away (and that's for
the re-examined patent, the original is older so if the 17 years actually
starts *then*, it's already expired). And the patent text itself contains at
least *some* amount of description of how it works (although it's definitely
not intended to be useful to programmers), including a listing of a really
ancient VMS DU: driver. It's certainly OK to copy that text, that's what
patents are for.

I've never seen any blanket permission for copying obsolete DEC hardware
docs, only the software thing that was in the software doc catalog.

John Wilson
D Bit
Received on Wed Apr 12 2000 - 17:11:02 BST