Reverse Engineering and Patent Protection: A Cautionary Tale
owl writes:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reverse-engineering-patent-protection-cautionary-tale-harry-strange/
In 1983, the home video game console market crashed bringing many companies to fold. After the dust settled, Nintendo emerged as a phoenix from the flames with their iconic Famicom, known outside of Japan as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The NES went on to sell in excess of 60 million units and brought about the third generation of console gaming. The success in 2016 of the NES Classic goes to show how popular the console and its games still are. While it may not have been obvious at the time, understanding the scope of IP rights may have helped to make this possible.
For the aspiring home console manufacturer in the early 1980s, there were really only two options when considering what microprocessor to use. The first option was the Zilog Z80, most notably used by the ColecoVision and the Sega Master System. The second option was the MOS Technology 6502, which was being used by the Atari 2600 (in the stripped-down form of the 6507), the Commodore 64, and numerous arcade games. When Masayuki Uemura, then head of Nintendo's R+D2 team, was presented with these options whilst developing the Famicom, he opted for the 6502. Although an official justification for this choice has never been given, a cursory glance at the patents for the two chips reveals that the decision may have been driven, at least in part, by patent protection.
When the NES finally hit US shores in October of 1985, very little was known about the technical specification of the console. All that was known was that the NES was powered by a hitherto unknown processor called the Ricoh 2A03. The most notable thing about the 2A03 was that its instruction set was almost identical to the 6502. Put another way, if you could program for the 6502, you could program for the 2A03. But the 2A03 wasn't a 6502, if it was then Nintendo would have had to get some kind of agreement from MOS Technology in order to use it. No such agreement was in place.
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