Legal Status of Amiga Clones (past and present)

[Trev]

@alexh

I doubt that. IBM published the source code for the original PC BIOS, and it spawned the PC clone industry.

Regarding Kickstart, you need a ROM bootstrap (might even be able to use the original, depending on what was made available to developers for redistribution), Exec, and all the devices and libraries normally attached to Kickstart. If you want m68k code, then much of it has already been replaced by various third-party patches.

[Trev]

@trekiej

You can look up patents and registered trademarks in the US at http://www.uspto.gov. Trademarks don't have to be registered, though, which is why people hire attorneys to determine whether or not a particular trademark exists before deciding whether or not to claim it for themselves.

Any work (and "work" has a very loose definition) created by anyone--person, corporation, whatever--is automatically copyrighted. You don't have to claim it, it just is. In the US, the copyright extends 95 years beyond the death of the copyright holder. (Good for your kids, bad for everyone else.) I'm not sure how it works exactly for copyrights owned by non-individuals. I'm sure it's explained somewhere at http://www.uspto.gov.

Trade secrets are the intellectual property, processes, secret handshakes, executive washroom keys, etc. that someone--person, corporation, whatever--has not made public. Sometimes, even "public" information can be considered a trade secret, hence the trouble surrounding leaked details on various Apple products.

Amiga, Inc. (Delaware) owns various Amiga-related trademarks, including one for "providing on-line forums for transmission of messages among computer users concerning computers and computer technology." That means amiga.org, amigaworld.net, et al could, in theory, be subject to a trademark infringement claim if "Amiga" were used without permission.

The orignal Amiga trademark is still listed as being owned by Amiga, Inc. (Washington). Funny how the record was never updated. ;-)

Regarding reverse engineering, read the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering

EDIT: Interesting note: The Workbench trademark was abandoned, so there's probably no reason it couldn't be used by MorphOS, AROS, or another project.

EDIT 2: And someone apparently registered a t-shirt slogan: "AMIGA Ask Me If I Give A-shit"