Reverse engineering masked ROMs, PLAs

I don't know about price, but try riga labs for a professional job:

Monte

...and, pray tell, how do you get to that conclusion? Every time one generates a document or a pattern (in this case the codes, masks, etc), such items *by FEDERAL law* are copyrighted! In fact, your missive to this NG, and my answer here is copyrighted! Now, if anyone wanted to make some lawyers rich and go to court over mis-use of copyrighted material, then copyright *registration* would be considered as the ultimate proof that judges cannot go against.

By knowing some of the details of US Copyright Law (Title 17 of the United States Code).

In the US, that wasn't the case before the Berne Copyright Convention took effect, March 1, 1989. See 17 U.S.C. 405(a):

Sec. 405. Notice of copyright: Omission of notice on certain copies and phonorecords

(a) Effect of Omission Copyright on With respect to copies and phonorecords publicly distributed by authority of the copyright owner before the effective date of the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, the omission of the copyright notice described in sections 401 through 403 from copies or phonorecords publicly distributed by authority of the copyright owner does not invalidate the copyright in a if work

• (1) the notice has been omitted from no more than a relatively small number of copies or phonorecords distributed to the public; or
• (2) registration for the work has been made before or is made within five years after the publication without notice, and a reasonable effort is made to add notice to all copies or phonorecords that are distributed to the public in the United States after the omission has been discovered; or
• (3) the notice has been omitted in violation of an express requirement in writing that, as a condition of the copyright owner's authorization of the public distribution of copies or phonorecords, they bear the prescribed notice.

In the case of the ROMs and PLAs I want to extract, none of the conditions for preservation of a copyright without notice have been met.

Also, these parts were sold before the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 (17 USC 901 et seq.) was enacted, so they are not elgible for protection as mask works.

True, because the Berne Convention is in effect. I'm including quotes from your message here as a matter of fair use.

Technically registration is still a legal requirement, even though a copyright notice is not.

However, the main practical effect of registration is that it allows you to collect actual damages for infringement. Without registration, you can only collect statutory damages, though they can be fairly substantial.

Eric

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Eric Smith wrote:

Just for reference, here is a list of when copyrights run out in various situations. Corrections/comments welcome.

Notes: [1] Term of joint works is measured by life of the longest-lived author. [2] Works for hire, anonymous and pseudonymous works also have this term. 17 U.S.C. § 302(c). [3] Under the 1909 Act, works published without notice went into the public domain upon publication. Works published without notice between 1-1-78 and 3-1-89, effective date of the Berne Convention Implementation Act, retained copyright only if, e.g., registration was made within five years. 17 U.S.C. § 405. Source: Tom Field / Lolly Gasaway.

IANAL, but I believe that requirement for copyright notice applied to published works then. But I don't know whether PLA code was considered an expression that was copyrightable then or that distributing IC constituted publication even. You probably need a real IP lawyer to answer that. But since you're incurring the liablity here, it's your call.

If you were considering putting this stuff under an opensource license it might be more problematic since you would not be the original author by your own admission. You'd probably want to document why you think the work is in the public domain.

This seems to have emerged from another newsgroup so the context of the original question is not clear. However, I think that those who need to perform reverse engineering of anything (and I have done more than my fair share of it - by neccessity) should be on clear ground as far as IP issues are concerned.

My own reverse engineering work was always for a client who owned the equipment and IP rights but had lost the documentation for systems that needed to be modified. If you are doing it for reasons other than that then the wicket is getting very sticky.

The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act is not relevant; the masks could be covered as works of art. As far as age goes, you are correct - if an item is old enough, then notice would be needed. Without registration, collection of statutory damages would be rather difficult as one would have to prove ownership and priority. Registration is equivalent to "overkill" proof.

So why not look at what they do, the functionality and re-create it with new parts? That way you avoid legal problems.

Regards, Pieter

vs.

photomicrographs, at

I think maybe IDC in Arizona, (Phoenix), and MOSAID used to do a lot of this delayering and taking picture stuff. Else, anybody that is in the Failure Analysis business for Semiconductors. Lucky for you these are from a vintage that makes it conceivable to me. Doing what the chinese probably did to that crypto equipment on something modern is way beyond my scope.

del

In message , Delbert Cecchi writes

Any references to the story?

beyond

I was referring to the US Electronic Intelligence or something plane that got kidnapped out of international airspace near china and forced to land. Got the crew back in a while. As I recall we got the airframe back in boxes. It was rumored the crew didn't have enough time to destroy all. Probably within last 10 or so years. Google should turn it up. EC137 may have been the aircraft type.

I don't know what happened to the electronics but I can guess.

del cecchi

A Chinese F-8 and a US EP-3 collided during an intercept; the F-8 was lost and the EP-3 performed an emergency landing at Hainan airfield. A fairly standard c*ck-up between great powers.

Kelly

And I'm certain that it wasn't deliberate just to hand bogus equipment to the Chinese. (Excuse me, somebody's knocking on my door.)

the theme for this episode of Jag:

though the ending is a bit different ;)

-Lasse