Re: R6502AP

Chip masks weren't protectable when the 6502 came out, while software was.
The law has changed since then, but it was too late for commodore (*).

Part of the problem with reverse engineering the z80 is they protected 
the mask by putting in gates that look like they are connected but are 
actually not. Unless you figure out which ones to remove then the cpu 
doesn't work properly.

I've never heard that there was any legal issues with the 6502. The 6501 
could be plugged into a socket meant for a 6800 and this worried 
Motorola. I doubt they had a legal case, but they had money. Therefore 
the 6501 was quietly dropped.

This was helped by the 6502 being cheaper than the 6501 when they were 
both announced and there was no demand at all for the 6501, it just 
wasn't worth wasting any time or money on.

(*) Supposedly mos/csg tried to make their own dram by copying it, but 
couldn't make it work on their process. So they weren't that innocent.

On 27/11/2014 14:43, Anders Carlsson wrote:
> Marko Mäkelä wrote:
>
>> Isn't it ironic how Nintendo is allowed to copy from others but not 
>> vice versa? As far as I understand, it is not a copyright violation 
>> to copy a physical item if some minor details change. It would be 
>> legal, provided that no patents, design patents or trademarks are 
>> violated either.
>
> I am not a lawyer, but which intellectual properties belong(ed) to the 
> MOS 6502? As far as I know, one can't claim copyright on hardware, 
> only patents. Since the 6502 doesn't contain any microcode, but a PLA, 
> I suppose there was no software copyright that could apply as well. To 
> be honest, didn't the 6502 itself emerge out of the 6800 and at least 
> to a beginning was controversial?
>
> Since Ricoh somehow circumvented existing patents by skipping the 
> decimal mode, I suppose legally there was little to do for MOS or 
> whoever held the remaining patents. Did rest of the underlying patents 
> lie with Motorola or no party at all? As for Nintendo's participation, 
> it is not clear to me if Ricoh engineered the 2A03 entirely on 
> Nintendo's requests or if it was a cooperative effort and Ricoh 
> already had some of this design available.
>
> Given these assumptions, I suppose a CPU design that indeed contained 
> microcode, to which extent it can be copyrighted just like higher 
> level computer software, would have been harder for Ricoh/Nintendo to 
> copy.
>
> The various articles about the Famicom keep coming back to the fact 
> that there was no 6502 development software in Japan, so Nintendo had 
> to roll their own. This does seem like a false statement as HAL Labs 
> made several games for the VIC-1001 which clearly predates the 
> Famicom, even on the prototype stage. It is quite obvious that in 
> Japan, they most reluctantly would import and adopt some foreign tools 
> (e.g. cross assemblers etc) from USA or Europe, so disregarding what 
> Commodore themselves and through partners did in Japan, perhaps there 
> really wasn't anyone doing 6502 coding before the Famicom.
>
> Perhaps though Nintendo rolled their own development software to not 
> raise suspicion from outside, in particular if they were going to use 
> a special CPU with built-in sound that resembled/copied an existing 
> design but without had it licensed. I don't know how tightly various 
> software firms worked with the hardware manufacturers, i.e. if MOS et. 
> al would have gotten a word of notice if some third party software 
> developer in the US sold software to Nintendo in c:a 1982.
>
> Best regards
>
> Anders Carlsson
>
>
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