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[Gerhard Fiedler]

On 2006-08-17 16:27:46, danielx wrote:

> A second point to consider: The chip is patentable (I think this is the
> case legally, as well as in the court of public opinion), 

No. A chip is not patentable. In your scenario, the /idea/ behind the
chip's functionality may be patentable, but for a patent it doesn't matter
whether the idea is realized as a custom chip or as software running on a
standard computer.

Differently from copyright (which is about a specific form), patents are
about ideas. They must have a realization (ie. you must be able to show
that it can work), but the patent encompasses all realizations of the
described idea. (It may of course be non-trivial to determine whether a
given modification has been described in the patent or not...)

Gerhard