Amiga Inc AGA patents?

[Calimeiro]

Seems only two patents remains now..

Have you read the linked patent claims?

these blockheads claim patents for MOUSE-CLICKING

if these patents get reviewed by the pto they will be deleted immediatly, i'm sure

description in short: " A system that displays something and waits for user interaction (clicking an icon) to display the results." Calling it multimedia doesn't camouflage that this is what Xerox has created the gui for.
Ridiculous by all means.

[freqmax]

Don't assume sanity at USPTO or from lawyers ..

The big corporate ecosystem is grab - profit - and spit out. Impacts be damned.

[psxphill]

Seems like the chain is Commodore -> Escom -> Gateway -> Amino Development.
The latter then renamed themself to Amiga Inc. And that seems to be where the copyright lies.

You'd have to go through the contracts, for example Amino may only have licensed the software and not transferred ownership of the copyright from Gateway.

[freqmax]

You may be right. The problem is the lack of information on this issue. There's not even an official duty to register like there is for patents.

[psxphill]

You may be right. The problem is the lack of information on this issue. There's not even an official duty to register like there is for patents.

With patent you need to check your idea hasn't been patented before, so you need a central repository.
 
With copyright you are supposed to assume you're not allowed to copy something unless you have the right to do so. If you want to license something but can't find the original owner, then it's likely they don't want to license it to you.
 
You could probably instruct a lawyer to contact the relevant parties though.

[number6]

@thread


Some of this has been posted before, but since I see discussion here about everything from trademark to patent to "reality":

You can read fairly up to date info on trademark here:
http://aminet.net/search?query=trademark

As cgutjahr and others mentioned on AW, trademark registration is not a requirement for use.

@freqmax

Seems like the chain is Commodore -> Escom -> Gateway -> Amino Development.

It's a more extensive chain of names than that actually.

@psxphill

You'd have to go through the contracts, for example Amino may only have licensed the software and not transferred ownership of the copyright from Gateway.

There is still no evidence to prove that the company now known for the nth time as Amiga Inc. is classified as anything but an exclusive licensee.

Since this is fairly close to the claim of "ownership", people often ask what the difference is in reality.

Nate Downes answered that on this site years ago and others concur. It's about transfer of rights without the owner's approval. I'll let you decide if the theory is valid.

You could probably instruct a lawyer to contact the relevant parties though.

And that's not a problem. The contacts are known by those who wish/need to make contact. The issue is that you can not accept the words of the attorneys as fact. I'll let you decide if that is due to expressing rights in terms of the interests of their clients or if they really just do not know. In the end, only a test in court determines these rights, or so I am told.

If there is one line from the freeamiga website worth remembering, it is this:

In a way, the new "Amiga" companies got what they wanted: complete confusion.

More info on the Commodore end of the history:

Nedfield

#6

[psxphill]

The issue is that you can not accept the words of the attorneys as fact. I'll let you decide if that is due to expressing rights in terms of the interests of their clients or if they really just do not know. In the end, only a test in court determines these rights, or so I am told.

Yes, a court is the only real test. However that will only happen if someone decides to pursue litigation against you.
 
If you have instructed a licensed attorney to draw up a contract with whoever they deem to own the rights, then if they were wrong then you sue the attorney and the person you licensed from. If you show you acted in good faith then the court are less likely to throw the book at you.

[number6]

Yes, a court is the only real test. However that will only happen if someone decides to pursue litigation against you.


And for what I believe is a variety of reasons (not simply loss of rights), I don't see this happening atm.
 

If you have instructed a licensed attorney to draw up a contract with whoever they deem to own the rights, then if they were wrong then you sue the attorney and the person you licensed from. If you show you acted in good faith then the court are less likely to throw the book at you.

Exactly. I've heard this in laymans' terms as "based on an assumption" from which to work. (deem to own the rights).

#6

[freqmax]

So the evil masterplan is to write a license contract with someone that claim they own the copyright and then when it's tried in court you can blame-someone-else ..? A complication is if that company is empty for money and your own company would then by demanded to provide compensation.

In essence if one has the financial resources and will to take the gamble one can make "legal" use of these ROMs.

[psxphill]

So the evil masterplan is to write a license contract with someone that claim they own the copyright and then when it's tried in court you can blame-someone-else ..? A complication is if that company is empty for money and your own company would then by demanded to provide compensation.
 
In essence if one has the financial resources and will to take the gamble one can make "legal" use of these ROMs.

You are likely to have to pay compensation in either way, but damages for wilful disregard is likely to be higher.
 
You wouldn't just find a random person, you'd need to get an attorney to follow the trail. They might not be able or willing to do that, or you might not be willing to pay their fee. If it goes wrong then you can always sue your attorney for mal-practise.
 
To make legal use of the roms will always take financial resources, even if commodore were still operating.

[OlafS3]

Who cares about the original roms today. We have the rom replacements now and I personal use them only in WHDLoad today (from my amigaforever installation)

[freqmax]

Compatibility, especially if software likes to rely on magic bytes..

"Hey we assume 0xc0ffee00 is at jump vector 0xdeadbeef so lets jump straight to 0x55891232 because super duper function is there.. !"

[persia]

How good are the replacement ROMs?

[freqmax]

At least AROS-m68k is not good enough for the UAE emulator for Unix. But I read that it should work on FPGA Replay.

[psxphill]

At least AROS-m68k is not good enough for the UAE emulator for Unix. But I read that it should work on FPGA Replay.

The last time I heard the major problem was speed, graphics.library/HID were designed around a fast processor and vga and not 68000 and ocs/ecs/aga.
 
I'm hoping that a new driver architecture will be created at some point that solves that.

[freqmax]

New driver architecture = incompatible with classic m68k hardware and AmigaOS (ROM).

The last I read on AROS-68k in UAE was that it got stuck on serial or parallell port initialization with a black screen.

How can graphics.library/HID be designed for VGA when classic Amiga in many cases were fully dependent on PAL/NTSC ..?