We should check this out. This is one of the bizar things about digital IP right now - the data in the abi file is obviosly yours, but potentially you are not alowed to access it in non-blessed ways because the encoding is proprietary. I have a feeling that we would have been in trouble if our code was based upon their serializer/deserializer code (which it is not) due to copyright issues. SW pattents don't work in the EU/UK (yet). Further than that I don't know. Oh, and IANAL.
Matthew
(goes to speak with someone who may know more)
Rich Heath wrote:
Hi,
I am a software developer based in the UK that has
been asked about producing a piece of software that
outputs data from the files in ABI sequencers in a
more human readable format. I hope the
org.biojava.bio.program.abi package will let me do
this, but I have some concerns about the legal
implications of using and contributing to this
package.
Does anyone know what the legal position is with
regards reverse engineering the Applied Biosystems
file format (and any other file formats come to that
matter)? I would imagine this file format is the
property of Applied Biosystems and they would not like
me producing applications that read from it unless I
provide them with a sizable licence fee (although I
guess I am not reverse engineering it if I just use
the above package, just if I contribute to it?).
Many thanks in advance for your help,
Rich
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