This brings to mind the fact that (at least the
first of) the
Amiga patents should be expiring within the next two or three years.
This should mean something to Amiga hobbyists, shouldn't it? I've
seen people implementing 6502 cores in FPGAs these days. Surely the
Amiga custom chips would be good candidates for similar treatment when
Gateway no longer has the right to sue somebody to make them quit.
(Gateway still owns the patents even though they no longer own the
Amiga trademark. What they plan to do with them in the next couple
years -- aside from keeping others from making good use of them -- is
beyond me.)
Aren't the designs, which are what really matter here, still copyrighted?
Copyright doesn't preclude other designs which perform equivalent tasks.
A reverse engineered version of a custom chip is perfectly legal under
copyright law despite recent attempts by congress to make it illegal.