On 2006-08-17 16:27:46, danielx wrote: > A second point to consider: The chip is patentable (I think this is the > case legally, as well as in the court of public opinion),
No. A chip is not patentable. In your scenario, the /idea/ behind the chip's functionality may be patentable, but for a patent it doesn't matter whether the idea is realized as a custom chip or as software running on a standard computer. Differently from copyright (which is about a specific form), patents are about ideas. They must have a realization (ie. you must be able to show that it can work), but the patent encompasses all realizations of the described idea. (It may of course be non-trivial to determine whether a given modification has been described in the patent or not...) Gerhard -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
