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15155today at 5:52 AM4 repliesview on HN

Everyone says this, and then exactly zero cases are cited in support of or against this creative legal theory known as "clean room RE."

No statute defines "clean room RE" and there's basically no relevant litigation establishing case law.


Replies

Dylan16807today at 7:19 AM

When you say "case" does that mean you're rejecting the evidence of Phoenix technologies not getting sued along with all the other BIOS clones?

mort96today at 7:12 AM

But there are plenty of successful projects which would probably have been taken down if it wasn't for clean room RE. I mean just look at the clean room IBM BIOS clones from "IBM compatibles" in the early days of the personal computer.

mech422today at 6:36 AM

there isn't ?? I sorta thought we figured all this out decades ago when SMB and DeCSS were being reversed? I think dosemu or something as well ?

I seem to recall DeCSS being the 'hot button' as it was RE'd in a 'non clean' way, the code released, and then a 'clean room' RE could be made from the 'public' info ??

edit: actually, at the time I think there was German law allowing RE for 'interoperablity' or some such. But that was a long time ago so my memory might be off.

bigyabaitoday at 5:58 AM

Who volunteers to be the shmuck that fights Nintendo's lawyers in court? Who's funding the defense against Apple?

It's safest to err on the side of plausible deniability, any proximity to OEM software increases liability if things go wrong.

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