>List:
>
>If you can't cope, sue. The reverse-engineering
>argument, that it trespasses on property, was already
>used by Microsoft many years ago (ca. 1993) against Stacker.
>
>In short, Stacker (the then market leader for on-the-fly
>disk compression software) found out that Microsoft had
>pirated its code for disk compression in Doublespace, and sued
>Micrsoft -- but Microsoft countersued saying that Stacker
>could not have reverse engineered Microsoft's code without
>a court order. The argument is the same as if you think that
>your stolen property is within a certain house -- you can't
>trespass or invade the house in order to verify it, you
>need to get a court order. Stacker won in part, but lost
>a lot. As an aside, the then market leader (Stacker), now
>is no longer even a player.
Stac won their court case.
They also won a large judgement ~$40M.
However, then they were bought by MS, making the whole thing moot.
Stac is still a big player, but only in the embedded systems area.
They make compression chips that are in many routers.
--
-- Marshall
"The era of big government is over."
Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 23, 1996
Marshall Clow Adobe Systems <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
