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I don't remember the exact details but a console of the 90s did something similar, but it was challenged in court and they lost
by luzjh 7y ago
I don't remember the exact details but a console of the 90s did something similar, but it was challenged in court and they lost
- bitwize 7y agoThe Sega Genesis required the string "SEGA" to be somewhere in ROM. They tried to use this to gatekeep development for the system by threatening to sue any unlicensed third-party developers for trademark infringement. They were, after all, forced to use the "SEGA" mark if they wanted their game to run. A federal appeals court ruled, in Sega v. Accolade, that you can't use a trademark that way. They also ruled that you can copy and reverse-engineer a piece of software to determine functional aspects of the console's operation for interoperability purposes. It's perfectly legal to require a string somewhere in the header before booting a ROM or running a program. (Otherwise, "magic number" checks to determine if a program is in executable format would be illegal!) The Sega case was specifically about using trademarks and copyright to restrict access to functional aspects of your hardware.
- coldpie 7y agoThe Gameboy did similar. For some odd reason they only verified the top half of the logo, though, so some devs got creative http://fuji.drillspirits.net/?post=87 http://fuji.drillspirits.net/?post=87 Technical details here: https://catskull.net/gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html https://catskull.net/gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html