Well, if he was correct, anything that was patented on Apple hardware would be
free to use on Android, or x86, or PowerPC, or SPARC, or MIPS..... It does not
cost a huge amount to port code from one architecture to another. Many years
ago,in the UK, Whitechapel Computer Works ported UNIX to new hardware (National
32016, aka 16032) in about 2 weeks. They said at the time that once you had a
viable C compiler is was relatively simple. I have ported a program of about
3000 lines from a Z80 and CP/M to a TNIX (UNIX v 7 derivative) running on PDP11
based hardware, in about two hours, only had to tweak a few syscalls, and I was
very inexperienced in programming at the time. Higher level languages than C
port even more easily, once you have the compiler or run-time interpreter in
place. (As an aside, think just how much the global economy has been boosted
by having a multi-architecture compiler suite like GCC, thanks originally to
RMS, and a go almost anywhere language like C, thanks to Brian and
Dennis!) On that basis, Samsung could change their CPU architecture
(getting new hardware would take a fair bit more than 2 weeks), port their code,
and be completely non-infringing. Of course they would likely be non-infringing
even now, because although Samsung and Apple both use ARM based CPUs, there are
many variants of ARM and the surrounding logic is also inevitably very
different. So if Hogan's theory was to stand up, all the way through the
appeal process to the Supremes, it would have very minimal effect anyway. Using
a different variant of the core chipset would be sufficient to kill
"interchangeability". I think he has contradicted himself at a very
fundamental level. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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