Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 14:13:47 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: yamaha japan relationships anyone? Message-ID: <38B0C98B.5F84A431@newsguy.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0002201653200.77743-100000@salmon.nlsystems.com> <002601bf7bc7$a1fbb800$d3bda2c2@hardcore>
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Many people have made this request. The following is what I remember of it. Notice, though, that... * I found the original link on the secret irc channel. * I'm under the impression that it was Asmodai who posted the link. Now, it was Asmodai who just said this is the EU law, so maybe the case I read about was on Europe, not US, though I was pretty sure it was US. I do not have the link, and I can't recall the exact details. Sorry. "Ronald F. Guilmette" wrote: > > >The U.S. Supreme Court made this exactly ruling one or two weeks ago. > > I've heard nothing about that. > > Was this done in relation to the whole controversy about the DVD decrypt > software? No, it was wrt to Playstation, Nintendo, Sega or something like that. Mmmmm... I thinking it was probably wrt to SEGA, because there was also a trademark dispute related to a small string. :-) An american company tried to get a license to distribute games for the game console, but the japanese company only licensed under the terms "We'll hold exclusive distribution rights to all games you produce", which was deemed unacceptable. So, the company went ahead and did a straight clean-room reverse engineering. They were later sued for the following (roughly): * Trademark violation. Later versions of the console required the string with it's trademarked name to be located at a certain point in the game's memory; this string was then displayed for a couple of seconds on the string. * Copyright violation. The company used a some hardware to sniff the object code, then disassembled and produced printouts of it. They lost on a lower instance, but have just won on a higher instance under the merit of "fair use", since they had no legal alternative to obtain the specifications to the console (other than engaging in a contract deemed unacceptable). Unfortunately, the link with the ruling did not have the complete ruling for some reason. I don't know how the trademark thing was ruled. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "If you consider our help impolite, you should see the manager." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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