[Cullinet]

Unless you are very explicit, yes, derivative works aren't covered by normal IP licensing and case law was established very long ago testing interpretations. I don't have Lexis unfortunately to pull the dockets, but towards the end of this year I will, and I am going to try and provide as much summary research as possible via a blog - because silicon IP is entering our lives in a big way soon as architectural complexity demands standard latency mitigating by implementing software in silicon (Oracle is claiming that expression as a common law trademark since a couple of SPARC generations, so even our normal terms of ref are going to be fraught.)

[speed_spread]

Another reason silicon IP could become commonplace is chip shortage. It's not so far fetched to imagine a simplified computer without specialized coprocessors but with a single reconfigurable gate array allocated to the problem at hand.