>
> [There have been several statements along these lines. Here's just one of
> them:]
>
> On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Ely Wilson wrote:
>
> > Does this mean that you in Europe could disassembler a binary, then modify
> > it so it reatins it's general function, email it to us americans modified
> > thus saving us the desparity of being prosecuted :) i think so.
> >
> > Also, federal laws protect patent/copyright. It is *NOT* forbidden to
> > dissassemble a source. Take a system BIOS for instance, to replicate a
> > BIOS you would do (and it HAS been done) a complete dissassemble, then
> > write down EVERYTHING it does, BUT NO CODE (yes I am leaving out details)
>
> With respect, this was ages ago. (Compaq). A lot of water has passed under
> that bridge, and some more recent decisions have occurred that complicate
> matters. At least, as a layman, I believe matters have been complicated
> enough that I don't trust myself to judge safely what the current
> situation is -- and I'd advise others not to. If no-one actually knows for
> certain, I'd suggest that the FSF, or Redhat, or one of the other groups
> should retain council, pay a lawyer to try and determine the actual
> current status of reverse engineering in the US -- and then write this up
> for everyone's use.
>
> (My rationale? The Stac vs. Microsoft decision. As I understood it, this
> determined that Stac misappropriated Microsoft's trade secrets by reverse
> engineering Microsoft's code. I don't understand this. Moreover, it is
> effectively a nonsense statement, according to my understanding of the
> definition of "trade secrets". Hence, I'm not going to trust anyone but a
> lawyer to determine what this actually means -- if anything.)
Small correction: STAC won over Microsoft, Microsoft had to remove
doubledisk support, Microsoft had to pay several million US dollars in
compensation.
Of course the legal conclusion could be the same either way.
john alvord
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