Re: [oc] legality of cores?!

[Jim Poder <Jim.Poder@wireless-networks.com>]

Boy, I guess I really opened a can of worms!!!  

I really think that this is an issue that merits some thought.  As I
said before, IANAL (I am not a lawyer), so use your standard BS filter! 
Part of patent law states that if a company does not enforce its patents
they lose all rights to them.  This includes academic and not-for-profit
uses.  This issue has come up in a big way in a lot of areas from
open-source software to genetically engineered plants.  From a purely
engineering standpoint, these arguments are ridiculous!  From a purely
business standpoint patents make up a significant portion of a companies
value proposition and are key to success.  I believe that Intel sued DEC
for patent infringement related to processor architecture back in about
'97 and won for $1.6 Billion!  In the Arm's case, their intellectual
property (IP) and patents are all they have!  They don't actually make
anything, but merely license their IP to other companies to turn into
products.  If these companies could go to another (cheaper) source to
get the same product, many would.  Arguably, many would not as there are
liability and reliability issues.  If you design a product using a true
Arm design and it doesn't work as promised, you could sue Arm (again
making more lawyers rich), thus appeasing your shareholders as there is
someone to hold accountable.  Using open source, there is no one to
sue.  It sounds ridiculous, but there are many companies that are
reluctant to adopt open source for this very reason!  I would argue that
if you could successfully sue a company for delivering faulty product,
Microsoft would have been sued out of existence by now!  As an aside,
Arm is currently suing PicoTurbo because they released a processor that
they claim runs Arm4 code, and faster than Arm's own processors.  Arm
claims 40-some patents related to RISC processors and such, but won't
reveal which ones (it feels) are being violated by PicoTurbo.  This is
one of the really troubling things about the current craze of patent
litigation.  Companies seem to hide their patents until they find
someone they can club over the head with them.  Why is it that nobody
links copies of their patents from their web sites?  ...reminds me of
the adage, "If you can't innovate, litigate!"

Now chances are that if you develop a clone product for your own
entertainment/education no one is going to even notice. Likewise, no one
is going to come after you for copying that Windows CD from work onto
your home PC, but they could.  As Open Source projects gain mainstream
acceptance these issues will become more heated.  There are several open
source projects that have been served with legal papers over patent and
copyright issues.  OpenSSh comes to mind, but I know there are others. 
Software patents are really a beast of a different color, though.  

On another note, cloning a popular processor/core makes a lot of sense. 
(1) you have something to measure/test your design against.  (2) there
are cheap and readily available tools and software to use (debuggers,
compilers, RTOSs, etc.)  and (3) People may actually adopt your design
as they are familiar with it.  If you strike out completely on your own,
the project has a *much* larger scope, as you need to develop all of the
tools (both hardware and software) for a working product. Even then you
will probably only see an academic/hobbyist interest.

I really like the idea of reverse engineering a processor, and coming up
with my own implementation, but I would be very sad if some lawyer told
me later that I had to throw it in the garbage.

jim