Date   : Sun, 17 May 2009 17:38:18 +0100
From   : mfirth@... (Michael Firth)
Subject: Copyright

Darren Grant wrote:
> I have been trying to establish the current ownership of software and
> documents from the Acorn 8bit era. Does anyone have any insight into what
> happened. It seems that only the RiscOS and ARM technologies were ever
> transferred from what was left of Acorn.
>
> Have any of the companies that have owned parts of Acorn ever hinted that
> the BBC Micro material belonged to them ?
>
> The reason for asking is that I am working on a project to clarify all legal
> issues relating to BBC Micro Emulation as there seems to be some grey areas
> about ownership. The problem is that there is currently a possibility that a
> copyright troll could attempt to block distribution of MOS with emulators,
> something I am keen to avoid. One of the ways to potentially prevent this
> would be to get the companies that have had some ownership of Acorn assets
> to provide a statement that they do not have ownership and if they did later
> discover that they did have some rights that they would permit use of the
> Acorn 8bit software.
>
> Darren
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> bbc-micro mailing list
> bbc-micro@...
> http://lists.cloud9.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/bbc-micro
>   
According to http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mjfoot/bbc.htm

"The BBC ROMs are still under copyright by Pace Micro Technology Limited 
<http://www.pace.co.uk>.
They are available for download here ONLY to people who still own a BBC 
B Microcomputer."

That seems to indicate that at some point Pace have laid claim to the 
BBC OS - presumably as part of them owning RiscOS they gained ownership 
of the BBC OS due to !65Host being part of RiscOS.

I guess one question is whether the BBC ROMs were transferred to 
Broadcom, and who owns them now.

I'm interested in who owns the other Acorn software - in particular the 
Econet fileserver rights - the only reference I've found is a negative 
one, http://select.riscos.com/prm/networking/aunintro.html says of the 
Level 4 FS that "While these products are not provided by RISC OS ltd, 
the clients to provide access to them are."

Regards

Michael