Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 28 Apr 2003 13:18:16 -0700 | From | Larry McVoy <> | Subject | Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!] |
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On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 10:04:24PM +0200, Matthias Schniedermeyer wrote: > On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 03:32:55PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > I don't think it is exclusively the open source folks that have the > > business guys worried, they are also worried about the illegal wholesale > > replication of the software which occurs in places like China. > > apples? pears? > > 100% copy or "binary clone" of a software is illegal, thats correct. > > Reimplementing the "ideas" behind a software is legal.
Sometimes. If you sit down with product A and use it in the process of creating product B which does what product A does, the courts have held that you can't copy look-and-feel for example. Independent derivation of the same thing is fine but just blatent copying is not.
It's true that you can copy the "math" as it were. But look and feel isn't math.
The fact that you can be sued over look and feel is one of the reasons that people do "clean room" reimplementations; if you can prove you never saw WhizzWidget2000 and you reimplemented it then you are safe from any such suit. Proving clean room is not easy, especially if the product is widely available. Look at the suits between intel and some of the chip clones and you'll see what I mean. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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