On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 08:10:14PM +0200, Bernardo Innocenti wrote: > > IANAL, but reverse engineering is perfectly legal here in Europe > and probably even in the USA if your goal is achieving > compatibility.
Have to be careful - most folks doing reversing do a clean-room implementation (1 person reverses and creates a spec, another person develops based on the spec) to avoid creating some software that might be called a derivative work of the original. > I can freely use the S3TC extension here because it's not (yet) > patentable. Any US developer could write it and even compile it, > as long as he doesn't sell it in his country. Use of a patented algorithm without paying the license fee is a patent infringement. Even if it's your own code on your own machines. Selling or distributing it doesn't even enter into the picture as far as the US legality goes; it only affects the damages which would be awarded in a patent suit. It's also better in general for you not to check whether what you're doing would infringe any patents or not, because damages for willful infringement are usually significantly higher. I think the general rule of thumb regarding patents is to play dumb until you haven't any choice (receive a C&D, or patent is somehow brought to your attention otherwise). -- Ryan Underwood, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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