Andrew Kunz wrote:
...
> A slave will only accept commands after it has received a message "COPYRIGHT
> XXXX" where XXX is the company name and copyright date.
>
> 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?

Well, that trick didn't stop a large number of makers of VGA video
cards. ATI, Genoa, V7, and many others all got around this tagging
trick.

If you look at any early VGA bios you will see a message to the effect
'Copyright IBM' at a specific address in the first page of the
card's BIOS. This was because the early IBM machines looked for that
tag to see if a VGA card was installed. The clone makers had to have
the same data in the same place if they wanted their cards to work
in IBM machines. One BIOS said "Definitely NOT Copyright IBM".


> BTW, the guys wife who came up with this scheme is a patent attorney > for a BIG bioengineering company.

Yeah, that's the kind of mind that would think of such a thing.

What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of a lake?


As has been noted before on this list, it's the lawyers that are
killing the evolution of technology. Where would we be today if Xerox
PARC had enforced it's IP rights on the 'look and feel' of mice, or the
graphical interface we call 'Winblows'?

Robert.Rolf-AT-Ualberta.ca