On Mon, May 15, 2000 at 11:15:02AM -0400, Andrew Kunz wrote:
>
> A slave will not be spoken to unless it responds to a "COPYRIGHT" query with a
> valid response, which just happens to be the company name and a valid copyright
> date for that type device.
>
> Now tell me, are you going to make a device for somebody when it has to tell the
> world that its copyright belongs to your competitor in order for it to work?
>

I remember, that in the old DOS times, there were drivers (mouse drivers?)
which had to include the "Copyright MICROSOFT" string (or something like this)
to be recognized properly...
Certainly they ware cloned as well. In many countries the reverse
engineering is allowed if it is necessary to assure hardware compatibility.
In this case such "COPYRIGHT" query is just a part of the protocol, inspite
of its meaning in English.
However it is just my opinion, and I'm not a lawyer...
--
                              Wojciech M. Zabolotny
        http://www.ise.pw.edu.pl/~wzab  <--> wzab@ise.pw.edu.pl

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