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Re: [dvd-discuss] SCC, Lexmark, and copyright versus reverse-engineering



On Saturday 29 March 2003 16:01, microlenz@earthlink.net wrote:
# As they are. No one says that life must be easy or that you have to get a free 
# lunch. If Compaq can RE the PC bios in the mid 80s, I doubt that this is much 
# worse. IF the program is truly copyrightable (and I would have to be convinced 
# of that), then it is still copyright infringement and the judges comments about 
# access are irrelevant (he' splitting hairs)

When Compaq reverse-engineered the PC BIOS, they had
access to the complete source code of the original, from which
they derived the specifications.

I'd say that there's a major difference in difficulty there.

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