From: curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Any way to *CREATE* Vcr+ (VCR PLUS) codes??? (please read)
Date: 6 Jan 93 22:04:08 GMT
Reply-To: curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch)
Organization: KCW Consulting

I wrote:
>This is at least part of why we stopped working on the codes.  It was
>>taking too much time.

In sci.crypt, ptrei@bistromath.mitre.org (Peter Trei) writes:
>      Wasn't Gemstar also threatening to sic rabid lawyers on you? Or
>did that only come later?

Yes.  Well actually it came later.  We did most the work around July
and August of 91, and got almost the entire 6 digit algorithm figured
out then.  We were having a lot of problems figuring out the final part
of the 6 digit algorithm, and I hadn't spend more than a few hours on
it total over the next few months.  At the end of November, in response
to someone asking about the algorithm on the net, I decided to post my
version of the program, but I wanted to clean it up some first, so I
posted a messages saing that I would post the program in about a week.
At the end of the week, before I posted it, I got a call from Gemstar's
lawyer.  We had multiple conversations with them (the Lawyer - I never
talked to anyone at Gemstar directly) but nothing every happened.  In
the middle of January, we finally got a letter from them stating that
they would take no legal action against us (at that time) but implied
they might if we released our version of the program.

All the advise we got implied that they would have no chance of winning
a court battle, be we didn't want to take the chance, so we didn't
release our work.  We decided to go with the Crytologia article
instead.

>      When I looked in the front of TVG, I found that the numbers are
>claimed to be *copyright* by Gemstar. I suspect that selling the
>numbers to TVG and other publications is another revenue stream for
>them.

Yes, a big revenue stream.

>(Can you really copyright a number?

You can copyright anything.  The question is whether it would
hold up in court or not.  No copyright on just a number would hold up in
court however.

But you can Copyright a table of numbers and show times that you publish
(which is what they do).  However, it's questionable if they could claim
infringment if you copied some of those numbers and times and re-publilshed
them.  I'm sure however, that Gemstar would take you to court if they could
prove that you copied one of they copyrighted listings, and let the court
decide. 

>      A possibly relevant note appears in John Dvorak's column in the
>Jan 12 PC Magazine. To summarize: [...]

Interesting.

>       I'm not a lawyer (and neither is Dvorak), but I suspect that
>this ruling means that a lawsuit from Gemstar against someone who
>published an algorithm which produced codes with the same values as
>the VCR+ device would fail, and quickly.

Yes, it sounds that way to me too.  But I think the case would always
had failed - even without the new ruling.

It's only a guess, but I kinda got the impresion that when Gemstar
was talking to us last year, they were only trying to delay us from
releasing to code.  Maybe they were trying to close some big deals
with VCR manufacturers and didn't want them to find out that someone
had broke the code until after the deal was signed?

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Newsgroups: sci.crypt