Legal Status of Amiga Clones (past and present)

[orb85750]

I'm trying to get a handle on the legal status of Amiga clones.  If I understand correctly, the only legal hurdle is the Kickstart ROM, because the information on it is protected by copyright.  The Amiga custom chipset, as a physical device, is not protected by copyright and the patents (if they existed) have expired?  Hence, is one free to produce as many Agnus chips as he/she desires?  How about making (Motorola) 68000 chips if we should choose to do so?  No problem there?

What did past producers of Amiga clones (e.g. DraCo, etc.) do about the AmigaOS?  Did they all use the officially licensed OS?

Has anyone on this board burned their own Kickstart ROMS?  I suppose that would be illegal, just as software piracy is illegal?  And is there any way around this legal hurdle for Amiga clones today?

Thanks, -Dave

[Nostalgiac]

>kickstart
yup - you're right

>The Amiga custom chipset,
well, you cannot "copy" the chips, but as far as I understand you are free to reverse engineer them. E.g. without "looking" you can design chips that do the exact same job with the exact same pin-layout.

>68000
nop, Motorola still owns that design (and frankly... rev.eng is simply not worth it here)

>burn KS roms
yes/no... as I see it: if you have an Amiga 3.1 rom chip legally aquired, then you are allowed to burn a copy (with extra stuff) as long as you ONLY use either the original rom OR the new one in ONE machine.

Just my £0.02
Tom UK

[Belial6]

Our best hope for getting around the Kickstart hurdle, which as far as I understand it is the only hurdle, is getting the 68k port of AROS back into development.  There is a bounty, and an individual has accepted the bounty, but we have heard nothing form him since he accepted it.  So, we have no idea whether it is almost complete, not even started, or somewhere in between.

Even if the initial releases are not very compatible with the A Inc kickstart, it would be really good for the MiniMig community if it could be shipped with the an OS so that it booted right out of the box.

[alexh]

The only thing up for debate is that Commodore published an Amiga Hardware Reference Manual in 1990(?) which describes the inner workings of the Amiga in English.

If you are to publish a "translation" of this book into another language (i.e. VHDL/Verilog) there is a slim chance they could go after you for copyright infringement.

But realistically no-one is going to care unless you make some serious money.

Some companies sell 68000 clones for FPGA and there are several open source 68000 clones for FPGA and Freescale has done nothing. That said no-one has tried to make a competitive ASIC chip. ARM and MIPS have successfully prevented people making clones of their chips but they are not quite as old.

I suspect that 90% of KS chips sold today are sold illegally. I wonder who has licenses to produce EPROMs these days and what and how they pay?

[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.

[orb85750]

I'm still confused about the legal status (but I'm not talking about the software contents on a ROM chip now).  Why is it illegal to copy a given (circuit on a) chip verbatim after the patent for that chip has expired?  During the patent period, it makes sense that one would have to produce a similarly operating chip by some other means (e.g. when AMD "copies" Intel), but does that hold even after the patent expires?  Copyrights on designs never protect you legally against someone else building and selling that product, correct?  That's why there are patents for processes and products.

And for clarity, look at the generic drug market as an example:  When the patent on Viagra ends, can't any generic drug company simply look directly at the molecular structure and copy it?  Or do they somehow have to reverse-engineer the drug without looking directly at the precise molecular structure?  That doesn't seem to make sense.  (Am I making sense?)

Thanks,
-Dave

Nostalgiac wrote:
>kickstart
yup - you're right

>The Amiga custom chipset,
well, you cannot "copy" the chips, but as far as I understand you are free to reverse engineer them. E.g. without "looking" you can design chips that do the exact same job with the exact same pin-layout.

>68000
nop, Motorola still owns that design (and frankly... rev.eng is simply not worth it here)

>burn KS roms
yes/no... as I see it: if you have an Amiga 3.1 rom chip legally aquired, then you are allowed to burn a copy (with extra stuff) as long as you ONLY use either the original rom OR the new one in ONE machine.

Just my £0.02
Tom UK

[orb85750]

Belial6 wrote:
Our best hope for getting around the Kickstart hurdle, which as far as I understand it is the only hurdle, is getting the 68k port of AROS back into development.  There is a bounty, and an individual has accepted the bounty, but we have heard nothing form him since he accepted it.  So, we have no idea whether it is almost complete, not even started, or somewhere in between.

Even if the initial releases are not very compatible with the A Inc kickstart, it would be really good for the MiniMig community if it could be shipped with the an OS so that it booted right out of the box.

Is the resulting product supposed to be an emulation of the Amiga ROM vs. a copy of the ROM?

[trekiej]

Does anyone know who owns the copyright to the Amiga manuals?
If I were to make an Amiga 2000 from the schematics would that be wrong?
I do not know a whole lot about copyrights.

[bloodline]

orb85750 wrote:
I'm still confused about the legal status (but I'm not talking about the software contents on a ROM chip now).  Why is it illegal to copy a given (circuit on a) chip verbatim after the patent for that chip has expired?  During the patent period, it makes sense that one would have to produce a similarly operating chip by some other means (e.g. when AMD "copies" Intel), but does that hold even after the patent expires?  Copyrights on designs never protect you legally against someone else building and selling that product, correct?  That's why there are patents for processes and products.

And for clarity, look at the generic drug market as an example:  When the patent on Viagra ends, can't any generic drug company simply look directly at the molecular structure and copy it?  Or do they somehow have to reverse-engineer the drug without looking directly at the precise molecular structure?  That doesn't seem to make sense.  (Am I making sense?)

Thanks,
-Dave

A patent is for  a technology, an idea. But anything that is actually designed by someone is covered by copyright... this information is all available on the internet... Wikipedia for example.

The contents of the ROM chip is covered by the same copyright as the contents of a book, the storage medium is not important.

[bloodline]

orb85750 wrote:

Belial6 wrote:
Our best hope for getting around the Kickstart hurdle, which as far as I understand it is the only hurdle, is getting the 68k port of AROS back into development.  There is a bounty, and an individual has accepted the bounty, but we have heard nothing form him since he accepted it.  So, we have no idea whether it is almost complete, not even started, or somewhere in between.

Even if the initial releases are not very compatible with the A Inc kickstart, it would be really good for the MiniMig community if it could be shipped with the an OS so that it booted right out of the box.

Is the resulting product supposed to be an emulation of the Amiga ROM vs. a copy of the ROM?

No the result would be a clone of AmigaOS... something that is functionally the same, but written by someone who has no knowledge of the original work, other than how it is supposed to behave.

[orb85750]

bloodline wrote:

orb85750 wrote:
I'm still confused about the legal status (but I'm not talking about the software contents on a ROM chip now).  Why is it illegal to copy a given (circuit on a) chip verbatim after the patent for that chip has expired?  During the patent period, it makes sense that one would have to produce a similarly operating chip by some other means (e.g. when AMD "copies" Intel), but does that hold even after the patent expires?  Copyrights on designs never protect you legally against someone else building and selling that product, correct?  That's why there are patents for processes and products.

And for clarity, look at the generic drug market as an example:  When the patent on Viagra ends, can't any generic drug company simply look directly at the molecular structure and copy it?  Or do they somehow have to reverse-engineer the drug without looking directly at the precise molecular structure?  That doesn't seem to make sense.  (Am I making sense?)

Thanks,
-Dave

A patent is for  a technology, an idea. But anything that is actually designed by someone is covered by copyright... this information is all available on the internet... Wikipedia for example.

The contents of the ROM chip is covered by the same copyright as the contents of a book, the storage medium is not important.

You missed my point.  I understand your last point, which is why I stated above that I was not referring to the contents of the ROM chip.  Yes, I know copyright protects it.  But nothing else is protected by the copyright, correct?   For example, the physical structure of a chip is not protected and so one can copy the physical structure exactly (once the patent expires)?  

[bloodline]

orb85750 wrote:

bloodline wrote:

orb85750 wrote:
I'm still confused about the legal status (but I'm not talking about the software contents on a ROM chip now).  Why is it illegal to copy a given (circuit on a) chip verbatim after the patent for that chip has expired?  During the patent period, it makes sense that one would have to produce a similarly operating chip by some other means (e.g. when AMD "copies" Intel), but does that hold even after the patent expires?  Copyrights on designs never protect you legally against someone else building and selling that product, correct?  That's why there are patents for processes and products.

And for clarity, look at the generic drug market as an example:  When the patent on Viagra ends, can't any generic drug company simply look directly at the molecular structure and copy it?  Or do they somehow have to reverse-engineer the drug without looking directly at the precise molecular structure?  That doesn't seem to make sense.  (Am I making sense?)

Thanks,
-Dave

A patent is for  a technology, an idea. But anything that is actually designed by someone is covered by copyright... this information is all available on the internet... Wikipedia for example.

The contents of the ROM chip is covered by the same copyright as the contents of a book, the storage medium is not important.

You missed my point.  I understand your last point, which is why I stated above that I was not referring to the contents of the ROM chip.  Yes, I know copyright protects it.  But nothing else is protected by the copyright, correct?   For example, the physical structure of a chip is not protected and so one can copy the physical structure exactly (once the patent expires)?  

If I were to design a GFX chip, the layout would be copyright to me. Someone could come along and design a chip that does the same thing, but unless they looked at my designs their chip layout would be different, and be covered by their copyright.

-Edit- Drugs are a bit different, you have to follow step synthesis to build the molecule, you can patent the process to make it... companies then try and build similar molecules with similar properties using a different process.

[trekiej]

A utility patent is 20 years, I believe.
Trade Secrets are protectable.

[orb85750]

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.)

[alexh]

I think that is open to interpretation. If copyright can protect the characters, places and themes in books and films, why not registers and their descriptions in a hardware reference manual?

The subject is kinda mute as no-one is going to produce anything