CA v. Altai (where the abstraction-filteration-comparison principle comes from) and SAS v. World provide pretty strong positive evidence that clean room is a valuable technique in both the US and Europe.
I do agree with you that the term is misused (it’s almost completely irrelevant here, anyway) and over-applied, but “not having ever been in a position to see or access the source code” is proven, especially in SAS v World, to be a pretty strong defense that’s worth pursuing in some re-implementation scenarios.
It's a defense. It's like having a moat around your castle. You don't need a moat to repel invaders since you also have a wall, and you might not get invaded anyway.
There's no law saying you have to do clean room RE. It's legal for me to look at a decompiled driver and write my own driver from scratch. It's not legal for me to just copy the decompilation, and a clean room environment is solid proof that it wasn't copied, but it's not the only way to not copy it, since I could also just not copy it.
But there are plenty of successful projects which would probably have been taken down if it wasn't for clean room RE. I mean just look at the clean room IBM BIOS clones from "IBM compatibles" in the early days of the personal computer.
there isn't ?? I sorta thought we figured all this out decades ago when SMB and DeCSS were being reversed? I think dosemu or something as well ?
I seem to recall DeCSS being the 'hot button' as it was RE'd in a 'non clean' way, the code released, and then a 'clean room' RE could be made from the 'public' info ??
edit: actually, at the time I think there was German law allowing RE for 'interoperablity' or some such. But that was a long time ago so my memory might be off.
Probably not. Clean room RE is serious business, projects like Dolphin have to carefully vet contributors to remain legal.
Everyone says this, and then exactly zero cases are cited in support of or against this creative legal theory known as "clean room RE."
No statute defines "clean room RE" and there's basically no relevant litigation establishing case law.
CA v. Altai (where the abstraction-filteration-comparison principle comes from) and SAS v. World provide pretty strong positive evidence that clean room is a valuable technique in both the US and Europe.
I do agree with you that the term is misused (it’s almost completely irrelevant here, anyway) and over-applied, but “not having ever been in a position to see or access the source code” is proven, especially in SAS v World, to be a pretty strong defense that’s worth pursuing in some re-implementation scenarios.
It's a defense. It's like having a moat around your castle. You don't need a moat to repel invaders since you also have a wall, and you might not get invaded anyway.
There's no law saying you have to do clean room RE. It's legal for me to look at a decompiled driver and write my own driver from scratch. It's not legal for me to just copy the decompilation, and a clean room environment is solid proof that it wasn't copied, but it's not the only way to not copy it, since I could also just not copy it.
When you say "case" does that mean you're rejecting the evidence of Phoenix technologies not getting sued along with all the other BIOS clones?
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But there are plenty of successful projects which would probably have been taken down if it wasn't for clean room RE. I mean just look at the clean room IBM BIOS clones from "IBM compatibles" in the early days of the personal computer.
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there isn't ?? I sorta thought we figured all this out decades ago when SMB and DeCSS were being reversed? I think dosemu or something as well ?
I seem to recall DeCSS being the 'hot button' as it was RE'd in a 'non clean' way, the code released, and then a 'clean room' RE could be made from the 'public' info ??
edit: actually, at the time I think there was German law allowing RE for 'interoperablity' or some such. But that was a long time ago so my memory might be off.
Who volunteers to be the shmuck that fights Nintendo's lawyers in court? Who's funding the defense against Apple?
It's safest to err on the side of plausible deniability, any proximity to OEM software increases liability if things go wrong.
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