Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? A lay (IANAL, IANYL, TINLA) view of existing US case law would say no. Nintendo made and then withdrew a

Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? A lay (IANAL, IANYL, TINLA) view of existing US case law would say no. Nintendo made and then withdrew a suit against the makers of UltraHLE, an early N64 emulator. Again, withdrawn, so nothing was decided. More interestingly, Sony tried something similar against Bleem!, a commercial Playstation emulator, in 1999. Sony lost, but the legal costs drove the company out of business anyways. So really, if you want to develop an emulator for modern hardware without getting lawyerpwned, you have to do something like: 1) Figure out a way to dump the (copyrighted) ROM that makes the various bits of the system work. The code signing involved makes this process completely illicit per DMCA, but there's apparently no standing to sue as long as you aren't distributing the results. (And then there's that fair use exemption for discussion and education besides) 2) Either clean room reverse engineer it with help, or make the dumping process easy enough that you can instruct others how to do it. PS2 emulator devs take the second option - every PS2 emulator requires a copy of the PS2 bios to work. 3) Hardware design isn't copyrightable, so you're fine with reimplementing the CPU in code. This means that if you want to make your hardware emulator-proof, it's just like all DRM. You are doomed to fail, it's just a matter of how long.