Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: UNIX trademark registration Message-ID: <4752@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Sat, 8-Dec-84 20:30:43 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.4752 Posted: Sat Dec 8 20:30:43 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 8-Dec-84 20:30:43 EST References: <6012@brl-tgr.ARPA> <426@elecvax.OZ> <1213@orca.UUCP>, <1995@nsc.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 67 > I do not fully understand how AT&T is able to hold nearly all UN*X systems > as a trade secret. Is there some kind of a limit on how wide spread > their 'trade secret' can be extended? Is there some method which > a trade secret becomes so widely known that it is no longer secret? > (much like a trademark can become public domain via too much generic use) A trade secret becomes unsecret only if the secrecy is broken. That is, if the secret becomes widely known to people who have *not* formally agreed to keep it quiet. This happens if AT&T gets sloppy about protecting it (in which case they aren't treating it as a secret, and their protection vanishes), or if somebody who has formally committed himself to keeping it quiet (i.e., by signing a Unix licence) spills the beans. In the latter case, the man who spills a secret he has agreed to keep secret is going to get sued for his shirt. So is the man he spills it to, if said recipient should have known it was secret. If AT&T catches it quickly -- and they are indeed on the alert for such breaches of secrecy -- they may well be able to contain the leak. If they can't, the secret isn't a secret any more. However, so long as the secret is protected properly, by things like non-disclosure agreements, there is no limit on how widely it can be used while still remaining legally a trade secret. > How is AT&T able to claim trade secret over something like 4.2BSD? Easy. It's derived from Bell code. And Berkeley, like all of us, has signed a non-disclosure agreement that requires keeping the Bell code secret. So long as there is one byte of Bell code in x.yBSD, it is still covered, and if Berkeley wants to distribute it, they have to be careful to do so only to people who are authorized to see the Bell parts. > If you diff 4.2BSD source with V.2 source, you will find that > a great deal of the code is not the same. Also BSD got major > funding via DARPA, who is in turn funded by US tax payers. > Is there some point where the long arm of trade secret breaks? > Does who did the work and paid for it impact the status of another > person's trade secret claim? If you start out with a trade secret > code and hack it up one side and down the other while the original > code goes off in another direction, can you claim your own trade secret? It doesn't matter that some of it is different; what matters is that some of it is still the same. Another thing that matters is that the Berkeley work is based on knowledge obtained by studying the secret material, although *this* is a very slippery area. Who else contributed to the development of x.yBSD is irrelevant; DARPA has no power to declare AT&T's trade-secret protection invalid. They could impose *additional* restrictions if they wanted to and could clear it with their superior authorities, but they can't arbitrarily disregard software agreements they signed to get Unix. Similarly, you can claim your own trade secret protection for mods you make to x.yBSD or System N, but this does not eliminate the trade-secret protection AT&T has made you agree to as a condition of giving you the stuff. If you rewrote the stuff from scratch, in a distinctly different way (so you weren't just reconstructing the Bell stuff from memory), *then* AT&T has no claim on you. This is what the Mark Williams folks did. But they were careful: the innards of their system are not at all similar to the Unix kernel, and they did not have access to Unix source while they were developing it. (Having access to the source doesn't prove that you looked at it, but it makes it a whole lot harder to prove that you *didn't* if AT&T sues you for copying their secret.) [Warning: I am not a lawyer. For heaven's sake, consult a specialist before doing anything rash! I disclaim all responsibility...] -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry