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From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Subject: Re: Question on Diamond Clock Synthesizer
Message-ID: <Bvy0H3.Lwq@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 05:55:49 GMT
References: <1b7tmgINNi06@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Oct11.045446.1020@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Organization: The Programmer's Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI
Lines: 33
In article <1992Oct11.045446.1020@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>"Batman" posted a message (id <4356bw@gotham.city>) disclosing a clock set
>algorithm for Diamond. Sorry I didn't save it, but it's possibly illegal
>to distribute. It may have been accidently archived somewhere. It will
It isn't illegal to distribute any more. Diamond has claimed that the
method for setting their dot clocks is protected by trade secret laws.
Unfortuantely, in order for something to be a trade secret, it has to
be just that -- secret. In my opinion, something that's been posted
to a newsgroup read by 59,000 people hardly qualifies as a secret, and
I think a judge would agree. So if someone were to use the
information gleaned from that article and write a functioning driver
for the Diamond Stealth or 24X, they should be legally in the clear.
Of course, Diamond is welcome to go after the "Bruce Wayne" character
that posted the article -- if they can find him. From the Path:
header of the article (I *did* save it), it looks like it was
submitted to the net from a site in Germany, which means Diamond will
have even more fun prosecuting this guy since they will have to go
through the German legal system. I don't even know if it recognizes
the idea of a trade secret.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the net. My
knowledge of trade secret law was mostly gleaned from a presentation
by a lawyer on the USL v. BSDI lawsuit. If you follow the advice in
this article and, as a result, get your pants sued off by some big
multinational company -- well, I warned you, didn't I?
--
Marc Unangst, N8VRH | "There are two ways to solve this problem:
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | the hard way, and the easy way. Let's start
| with the hard way."
| - W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture