-=> On 28 May 95  22:08:01 Kevin Ring said to Mike Bilow <=-

 > The law on this is complicated, and the
 > standard counterclaim would be that reverse engineering has always been
 > legal under U.S. law and is considered essential in the promotion of
 > competition.

Actually, I believe you have this wrong ... reverse engineering can be
made illegal in the states as part of a (sales) contract. In most of
Europe it cannot be made illegal as part of a contract, or in any other way.

I am not sure waht the position is about reverse engineering something
in the UK and selling it in the states, but I imagine its a non-event
cos the Americans wouldn't buy it on grounds on NIH :-)

This is an interesting issue, cos in most of the third world, copyright
is not enforcable cos of lack of resources, corruption, incompetance, etc
If you pirate a CPU chip in (say) Zaire, is it legal to export them to
the states? The UK? What happens if you sell them to Korea, they are
put in PCs and sold to France? (Assuming the Don't actually say 'INTEL'
on the outside). (I say this assuming that the chance of a wafer-fab
plant working in Zaire is very remote.)

What happens if you pirate the mask design in Zaire and then make the
chips in Taiwan?

And sell them in Russia?

Whose laws say what, and whose jurisdiction applies, to whom, and why?

 KR> There's also the fact that doing this wouldn't require any kind of
 KR> reverse engineering, only the documents provided publicly from
 KR> Microsoft and IBM.

Theoretically, but then there's all those undocumented APIs, and places
where the doc's are wrong.

 KR> I would imagine that unless they say specifically
 KR> you can't use them for something like this, there would be nothing
 KR> they could do about it...

I think that even if they did a UK court could be persuaded it was an
'onerous' clause, and was not enforceable.

However, certain US companies have been known to send the hit-men round.


Andrew


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