Re: decapped CBM MOS

From: William Levak <wlevak_at_SDF.ORG>
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2016 03:55:43 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1606040351010.2627@sdf.lonestar.org>
On Thu, 2 Jun 2016, 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.
>
> For internal roms it becomes slightly more complex as they likely are still 
> covered by copyright and if you publish an image of it then it's probably 
> going to be recoverable. Very few MOS chips have internal roms and I don't 
> imagine anyone has piles of cash to fight you posting something that old 
> online.

Chip masks are usually copyrighted.  But in order to get the copyright, 
you have to provide a copy of the image, which becomes public record.
Theoretically, you could get a copy of the image from the Library of 
Congress.


wlevak@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

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