Re: Xilinx Legal

Ed McGettigan schrieb:

> The (A) company used these exact same EULA restrictions against Clear Logic
> and won.
>
> More details here:
> http://www.internetcases.com/archives/2005/09/ninth_circuit_a_1.html

There is no mentioning of the EULA. Apparently there is a special law in
the US to protect semiconductor masks and the court treated the
bitstream as a mask work.
The EULA can still be completely invalid.

I just skimmed the law, and I still do not see how Altera could possibly
have won.
It says

"the “owner” of a mask work is the person who created the mask work"
If I start bitgen, I am generating the mask work and not altera. I use a
tool to do it, yes, but surely I am still the creator?

But even if Altera was the owner, it goes on:
"the protection provided for a mask work under this chapter shall
commence on the date on which the mask work is registered under section
908, or the date on which the mask work is first commercially exploited
anywhere in the world"
Surely Altera did not register my bitstream and did not exploit it
comercially before I sent it to Clear Logic?

Then the law goes on, and explicitely allows to reverse engineer the
mask (bitstream) to create your own bitstreams with the information
obtained:

§906 (a) 1 and 2: "it is not an infringement [...] for [...] a person
who performs the analysis or evaluation described in paragraph (1) to
incorporate the results of such conduct in an original mask work which
is made to be distributed."


I conclude that §906 (a) of the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of
1994 permits to reverse engineer bitstream information to create open
source tools. But hey, IANAL.

Kolja Sulimma


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