[openbeos] Re: Sunday amusement

>I'm not a lawyer (I just play one on TV ;-)). But a possible suit from 
the
>owners of the BeOS goes beyond what is underneath the covers.  If the 
look
>and design can be confused with the original, by the consumer, then 
there
>are copyright laws that protect the author of that design (in this case
>Palm).  If the OS is a 100% knock off of the original (except maybe its
>name) in terms of look, behavior, design, API, then that product is
>violating the copyright of the original.  It becomes more of a question 
will
>Palm enforce that copyright.  They would if they felt the clone product
>threatens them or that the consumer may be confused by the clone 
(unlikely
>here since Palm is not currently marketing their original).  As far as 
I
>know, there is no BeOS US patents with R5, because that would be 
another can
>of worms.

>> Well, here is what amused me - under limitations (in the EULA) it 
>> actually says that you cannot reverse engineer this "program".  Also, 

>> it 
>> says that you cannot release benchmarks of this "program" without 
>> written permission from BeInc.  Amusing.  but who reads the EULA 
>> anyway.

        Aside from look & feel stuff or reverse engineering, what about the 
copyright notices in the BeOS header files that we're using to reproduce 
the API?

        Graham

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