Re: decapped CBM MOS

On Thu, Jun 02, 2016 at 08:29:01AM +0100, smf wrote:
> On 02/06/2016 05:17, William Levak wrote:
> >The US Supreme Court has ruled that reverse engineering a product is 
> >legal.  It's what you do with the information that may be illegal.
> 
> The specific question was related to Ricoh copying the 6502 and 
> producing their own versions, with BCD disabled to avoid the patent. I'm 
> not sure how many chips MOS made after 1989 (CIA's mostly) but the 
> protection only lasts 10 years, so it should be fine now anyway.

From directive 87/54/EEC (valid EU-wide):

"
The exclusive right to authorise or prohibit reproduction does not apply
to the reproduction for the purpose of analysing, evaluating or teaching
the concepts, processes, systems or techniques embodied in the topography
or the topography itself.
"

So the reverse engineering is Just Fine w.r.t. this.  Patents also do
not matter.  Only copyright can matter, for microcode or whatnot, as
you say.

And things can differ in other jurisdictions, of course.


Segher

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