🚀 go-pugleaf

ptrei@bistromath.mitre.org (Peter Trei) writes:

>      A possibly relevant note appears in John Dvorak's column in the
>Jan 12 PC Magazine. To summarize:

>      Sega sued Accolade, which was making Sega Genesis game
>cartridges without getting licensing from Sega. This suit was settled
>in Accolade's favor with a ruling that:

> * Accolade could make Genesis games without asking Sega's permission.
> * Accolade could reverse engineer the Sega software needed to let the
>   cartridge talk to the machine.
> * Accolade could use a Sega cartridge as a model for the reverse engineering.

>   Dvorak says: "Who says you can't look at the code of the product
>you're reverse engineering? ... This means that software code of a
>competitor now can be examined for the purposes of reverse
>engineering."

That's one Judge on the particulars and peculiarities of one case. Teh
next judge could well ignore this judgement and come to the opposite
conclusion, or say that the case is sufficiently different that this
judgement has no bearing. Ah the fun of the Law.