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From: ted@telematics.com (Ted Goldblatt)
Subject: USL's claims to "intellectual property"
Message-ID: <1992Aug13.191858.18970@telematics.com>
Sender: root@telematics.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: sirius.ftlsw.telematics.com
Organization: Telematics Intl., Inc.; Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 19:18:58 GMT
Lines: 69
(ObDisclaimer: I'm no lawyer, and don't even play one :-))
The way _I_ read the complaint and intellectual property law
(which is sort of haphazardly), USL could be claiming any
of 3 things (or a combination):
1. Net2 contains code that makes use of ideas or techniques
that, while not patented by USL, are treated by USL as
trade secrets (provided to source licensees with usage
and control restrictions), and in revealing these, CSRG
violated the license.
I would think that the number and depth of articles and
books about Un*x internals, as well as the sheer number
of source licenses and relative lack of control over them
would make a trade secret argument untenable. Certainly
I wouldn't think that there would be any inovative
techniques in V32 that hadn't been published by now.
2. Net2 contains code directly lifted from (some rev of)
Un*x, or code that had only been cosmetically altered
from actual USL code.
This is a judgement call area. Incrementing a variable
named "i" will look like "i++", no matter who writes it.
For larger chunks of code (and for "cosmetic" rewrites),
the questions are "for the given task, is the (practical or
reasonable) solution space constrained sufficiently that
2 alternative implementations will always end up similar"
and "what is similar". Depending on the competence (and
biases :-)) of the reviewers, there could be calls either
way here, but if I were USL, I wouldn't depend on this.
(Admittedly, I haven't seen either peice of code, so take
that bold pronouncement as you will.)
3. This (potential) claim would depend on USL's ability to
treat all of V32 as a single copyrighted entity. The
argument then could be that at each step of derivation,
from V32 through BSD4.4 (including such side ventures as
Net2), _all_ of the code (including that wholey written
by CSRG or others) becomes a derived work of V32 by virtue(?)
of its incorporation into something that is admittedly a
derived work (or at least, that items that are replacements
for items in V32 (the brick-by-brick argument) would fall
into this category). and further, that this code doesn't
lose its status as a derived work simply by virtue of having
been "un-incorporated" as a separate entity. (Whew, that was
a long sentence)
This one is ugly. Unfortunately, it is purely a legal argument,
based on interpretation of copyright rules, and therefore
cannot (easily) be challenged on technical or other "merit"
grounds. It would, however, let off the hook any Un*x-alikes
that are not descendents of BSD (e.g., Linux, at least exclusive
of any Net2 based add-ons). What it would mean for Net1, which
seems (on the surface) to be totally free from any ATT/USL
heritage is not clear. It seems likely that if the laws
_could_ be interpretted this way, USL would try this.
All of this does seem to argue against academia and others who are
interested in free distribution of research and results from getting
involved with "protected" code, since the "black box" approaches
used in industry for reverse engineering are probably too expensive
and provide too little benefit to be worth while.
ted
--
Ted Goldblatt ted@telematics.com (305) 351-4367
Telematics Intl., Inc. Ft. Lauderdale, FL