[justin66]

> But it will nevertheless be under copyright until long after we're all dead, so if you read it Microsoft could presumably still decide to sue you for copyright infringement if that ever happens to seem advantageous for them.

You'd have to actually, you know, infringe their copyrights.

It's hard to know if you're one of the many who are confused about copyright, patent, and trademark but just reading the code doesn't put you on the hook for anything.

[ptx]

Couldn't they pick any piece of code you write that happens to looks similar to some piece of code in MS-DOS and argue that it is in fact derived from their code, if it's known that you previously read the MS-DOS code?

Sort of like the "rangeCheck" portion of the Google v. Oracle case.

With patents it doesn't matter whether you read their code or not: you're screwed in any case. But with copyright the history of the code matters, so it could matter if you have seen their code before writings yours, I think.

[justin66]

> Couldn't they pick any piece of code you write that happens to looks similar to some piece of code in MS-DOS and argue that it is in fact derived from their code, if it's known that you previously read the MS-DOS code?

You write a lot of MASM code, such that this is actually a risk for you?

Maybe it's possible? I'm not a lawyer but I think at some point early in the process, in order to move forward, they'd have to convince a judge that they'd suffered damages as a result of your use of a few lines of their ancient MASM code. I assume that's where the whole thing would be met with laughter unless, of course, you've got some truly cunning thing you're going to do with DOS assembly code and make a million.

All that is before anyone needs to even consider whether the code you borrowed is trivial in nature such that it's protectable or not protectable via copyright.

One of the lessons of the Google v. Oracle case: Oracle didn't actually win anything in damages.

> With patents it doesn't matter whether you read their code or not: you're screwed in any case.

Okay, forget the rest and focus on this: you need to familiarize yourself with the concepts of willful infringement and treble damages. Unlike the rest of the stuff we're talking about, it actually matters and is not pure paranoia.

If you violate a patent - and realistically, all of us who write any software are violating someone's patent - you'd better hope you can convince a court that you did not do so knowingly. How do you do this? Make an effort not to read any patents, ever. Plausible deniability.

Whether the code you've read is patented or not is actually trivia. Whether you knew it was covered by a specific patent is important.

[ptx]

>> With patents it doesn't matter whether you read their code or not: you're screwed in any case.

> Okay, forget the rest and focus on this: you need to familiarize yourself with the concepts of willful infringement and treble damages.

> [...]

> Whether the code you've read is patented or not is actually trivia. Whether you knew it was covered by a specific patent is important.

So we're in agreement then? :) Yes, good point about knowingly infringing a patent, but, as I said (or meant to say), reading or not reading the source code has no effect on the patent situation. (But I'm not a lawyer either, so what do I know.)