Pre-assembled Minimigs - Cmonnnnn!

[alexh]

The main problem is the initial investment. To do a production run large enough for savings to come in (200) the guy doing it will have to put up several thousand pounds (perhaps £2-3k, perhaps $6000) for at least 2-3 months.

That is a lot of money to find, and risk, on an as yet (v1.1) untried design.

It's going to take:

a) someone for whom £3k is not a large amount of money
b) prepayment ordering where the risk is giving your money over and never seeing it again.

[alexh]

little wrote:
So I stand by my words, A inc has no legal grounds against the minimig and with amiga forever there is the posibility of 100% legal clones.

Not true. Whoever owns the copyright for the book "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual Third Edition 1991" could sue for infringement of copyright. Minimig is effectively an unofficial translation of this book from English to Verilog.

You could of course sell the boards unprogrammed.

[alexh]

little wrote:
Are you trying to imply that the "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual Third Edition 1991" was written before the amiga made it's debut in 1985?

Nope, the first edition was published in 1986 shortly after the debut. The 1991 is an update for ECS.

When I said earlier "the copyright holders", I was of course trying to explain that the copyright for this book was originally owned by Commodore Amiga, but with all the history that has taken place, the current owners is unknown to me.

little wrote:
whoever owns the copyright to K&R can sue ALL C programmers for "infringement of copyright" since coding C is effectively an unofficial translation of this book from English to a said computer language

You are not comparing the same thing. The K&R C book describes a language and not an object (such as a program) this book describes a bit of patented hardware in English. If K&R were also the authors of the language, I am sure their copyright could have prevented others writing compilers, and probably other books which used explicit C-Syntax, if they had wanted to.

Publications of HRM's are common in the hardware world. They help extend the life of IP protection beyond patents. Whereas any patents registered for the Amiga would have expired by now, the publication of this book has extended protection by perhaps upto 70+ years after 1991.

[alexh]

IF the copyright owners know they are owners, and IF they know about MiniMig (I know that is a lot of IF's) as soon as someone started to make any serious money they would come out of the woodwork for their slice.

Something that anyone thinking of investing lots of money into this area should consider.

Making and selling unprogrammed boards, perhaps as "general purpose FPGA boards" should be fine.

[alexh]

little wrote:
... and they could be counter sued for racketeering

Yeah, right. Not.

little wrote:
because is the only reason for a demand, extort money,

One way to look at it, but it happens all the time. It's pretty rife in the US at the moment.

little wrote:
there is no piece of hardware in the minimig that would holds water in IP demand in a court of law.

As a hardware engineer, a patent holder, and some experience at being an evil SOB, I say you are wrong.

Unfortunately some of Dennis' posts to this forum backup such a claim :-(

Dennis wrote:
Minimig is based 90% on the documentation provided by the Hardware Reference Manual

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=31078

[alexh]

little wrote:
Is that all? Man, you had me worried there for a second.

Heheh.

SCO had better chances with imaginary patents than A inc has arguing they have a book copyright, since they will have to show proof to the judge and the instant they come out empty handed it will be over, as simple as that.

You're making one assumption, that Amiga inc. owns the copyrights to that book. Who's to say it wasnt Tulip or someone else who bought Commodore?

I am sure everything will be fine.

I just thought that anyone considering investing their own personal money making and selling MiniMig's should weigh up this as a small but potential risk.