From: sdw@lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 95 13:51:45 PDT
To: jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu (Jon Lasser)
Subject: Re: RC4
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950726160640.3857A-100000@rwd.goucher.edu>
Message-ID: <m0sbDPf-0009tGC@sdwsys>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
> On Wed, 26 Jul 1995, Russell Ross wrote:
> 
> > I wasn't aware that you could copyright an algorithm.  Patent, yes, but not
> > copyright.  Intellectual property meens secret, right?  Aren't there any
> > precendence cases involving propriety schemes that are reverse engineered?
> > I know there have been, I just can't remember what they are. 
> 
> There was one a few years back with a special chip in Nintendo cartridges 
> that you needed to buy from them... it was against a company called Atari 
> (no, not THAT atari (i think)), and was decided in Atari's favor.

There has only been one company called "Atari".  They did split between home
computers and video games/PC game software when Jack Tramiel left Commodore
and bought Atari.

I thought that it wasn't decided in Atari's favor, but maybe I didn't hear
the final word.  I believe that they used a form of rom access that they
had patented and restricted producers by only licensing roms to those
they wanted.

If I remember, it had something to do with address auto-increment.

I always wondered how the 'Game Genie' people got enough information
to do what they did.  (A true 'wedge' cartridge that you could program
codes into for all games to give extra lives, hard to find abilities,
change parameters, etc.)

> Hope that helps...
> Jon
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jon Lasser                <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>            (410) 494-3253 
>           Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/
>   You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.

sdw
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