I dunno.  We're talking about cloning a processor architecture, here.  
Seems
to me that a good part of the problem is that this sort of thing really 
ought
to be protected against, and yet I don't think any of the current 
intellectual
property protection provisions really provide for it.  I mean, most of 
us
probably believe there is nothing really "novel" about most 
architectures;
given a data sheet describing the instruction set, a reasonably 
talented group
of engineers can easily produce a close clone.  A lot of the mess in 
the  patent
system is people and companies trying to protect against that sort of 
thing using
tools (patent, copyright) that really don't apply.

BillW
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