"Amiga" patents - what are they?

[bloodline]

This should be an faq somewhere, the patents are dead, the copyright (on the OS) and trademark (Amiga) continue.  Lots of companies have no patents, Amiga Inc is just one of them.  It's the copyright that prevents you from cloning AmigaOS and the trademark that prevents you from calling it Amiga OS...

Nothing prevents you from cloning AmigaOS... hence AROS and MorphOS... you just can't call it AmigaOS.

Copyright stops you from copying, as in physical copy (i.e. disk/rom chip/etc), but cloning is fine.

[asymetrix]

See thread title.

I'm thinking about the original Amiga patents and/or intellectual property coming from the original Commodore bankruptcy...

What exact areas does the patents cover? Anybody know? I tried googling but nowhere did I find anything useful - apart from some DMA patent from the late 80s.

This is purely out of curiosity - since everytime the Amiga intellectual property/patents have switched hands they have been "spoken highly" of.

I thought Gateway (now bankrupt) owned the Amiga patents, and Amiga has a lifetime, exclusive ? licence to use it.

[cgutjahr]

I tried googling but nowhere did I find anything useful - apart from some DMA patent from the late 80s.

In the US, a patent lasts for either 15 or 20 years - I'm not 100% clear on how the lifetime of a patent is decided.

The USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) has a searchable patent database:

http://uspto.gov/

(click "Patents" in the menu to the left, then "Search Patents", then select "Quick Search" in the left block ("Issued Patents"). To locate Amiga related patents, search field "Assignee" for "Amiga" or "Commodore".

The search results will include various patents filed after 1994 - these are not Amiga related and only listed because they are assigned to "Amiga Development LLC", Gateways (still existing) subsidiary used for 'parking' the company's patents.

All patents assigned to "Commodore-Amiga" or "Amiga Corporation" have been filed before 1990. No matter if their lifetime was 15 or 20 years, they're expired by now. That includes the famous "selecting multiple menu items" patent filed in 1988.

If you search for "Assignee = Commodore" (lots of patents filed after 1994 by other "Commodores"), you'll encounter various patents filed after 1990, these are the ones that could still be valid if their lifetime is indeed 20 years:

• Method and apparatus for performing multiple simultaneous error detection on data having unknown format
• Multiple linked game controllers
• Audio channel system for providing an analog signal corresponding to a sound waveform in a computer system
• Decoder for cross interleaved error correcting encoded data
• CD-ROM video game machine
• System for relocating a multimedia presentation on a different platform by extracting a resource map in order to remap and relocate resources
• Binary to unary decoder for a video digital to analog converter
• Apparatus and method for transferring interleaved data objects in mass storage devices into separate destinations in memory
• Bus arbitration system for granting bus access to devices following two-wire bus arbitration protocol and devices following three-wire bus arbitration protocol

[Tension]

CD-ROM video game machine

Surely not?

[Haranguer]

@asymetrix

Gateway aren't bankrupt.  They just don't own Amiga, Inc anymore.

[asymetrix]

@asymetrix

Gateway aren't bankrupt.  They just don't own Amiga, Inc anymore.

wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway,_Inc.

On October 16, 2007 the acquisition by Acer became final and Gateway became a privately held company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Acer. The board of directors resigned and a new board was appointed.

They dont OWN Amiga Inc, but STILL OWN Amiga patents, or is it ACER ?
Gateway never SOLD the Amiga patents to Amiga Inc, they allowed Amiga Inc to use them.

executive update, Jan 3, 2000
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/jan3rd2000.html

Here is what was acquired from Gateway:

1. All trademarks logo's etc.
2. All existing inventory of Amiga International
3. All existing licenses.
4. License to All Amiga patents (Gateway still owns the patents, but we are able to use them).
5. All web sites, and registered domain names.
6. The Amiga OS and all that is associated with the OS.
7. The Amiga operation as it exists today.

[persia]

Gateway own what's left on the patents, a year or two at best on the handful that remain, they also own the name Amiga and copyright on AmigaOS, they in turn belong to Acer.

Now here is where it gets interesting, Gateway had an exclusive agreement with Amiga Inc, the original one.  That Amiga Inc no longer exists.  KMOS, the current Amiga, Inc had the agreement transfered to them after the original Amiga Inc was unable to pay it's bills (insolvent in the EU definition, but not US).  Now was Gateway informed and did they agree to this?  Was the agreement transferable?  These are things we just don't know.  As long as the Amiga name is worthless Gateway probably couldn't care less and Amiga Inc as far as anyone can tell is gone except for rented space on a server.  Indications are that the Amiga World Headquarters (a room above an Amish furniture store) are no more.

wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway,_Inc.



They dont OWN Amiga Inc, but STILL OWN Amiga patents, or is it ACER ?
Gateway never SOLD the Amiga patents to Amiga Inc, they allowed Amiga Inc to use them.

executive update, Jan 3, 2000
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/jan3rd2000.html

[Tension]

Surely not?

Surely not?