orb85750 wrote:
I just found this from lawmart.com:
"The copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing. For example, a description of a machine could be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the description; it would not prevent others from writing a description of their own or from making and using the machine."
Note the last part: So anyone could make the chip based on your design (if it's not patented) and sell the resulting product without owing you any royalty. Your copyright protects you against someone else publishing your work, but not against someone producing the product you designed. Only a patent protects you there. (And the maximum patent lifetime is 20 years.)
I don't think so, I think the design of the custom chips itself is also something copyrightable and if you want to make an exact copy of a certain chip you need to copy the design at some point, e.g. transfer it to the manufacturer etc.
That said, I don't know any custom chip replacement project that is literally copying the original design. They are doing their own design that happen to behave compatible with the original chips. This is not copyrightable. I don't think it is even possible anymore to do a literal copy of the designs as they were done for old technologies.
greets,
Staf.
