@arubislander its to my understanding they past "right to repair " basically everywhere? ...the U.S and the U.K?? .....my logic is once i buy the device its mine including any gpu or hardware included ....the fact companies wont come off drivers is nothing more than a way to keep trying to extort money from you ....and actually would violate right to repair ....i would argue this in court because once you backwards engineer anything without even looking at the proprietary drivers ....its no longer their ip ...also there is a few "legal" approaches to this ...also i would cite precedence .. 1. NEC Corp. v. Intel Corp. (1989/1990)
This is the landmark case that officially validated the "Clean Room" defense in a U.S. court.
The Conflict: Intel accused NEC of copying the microcode for the 8086 processor to create their own V20 chips.
The Strategy: NEC hired an independent engineer who had never seen Intel’s code. They gave him a specification of what the microcode needed to do (the functional requirements). He then wrote his own version from scratch.
The Ruling: The judge compared the "Clean Room" code to Intel’s code. He found that while they were similar, the similarities were due to functional constraints (there were only so many ways to make the hardware work) rather than copying. This proved that a person could arrive at the same result independently, effectively defeating the copyright claim.
Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc. (1992)
This case expanded the right to reverse engineer for the purpose of interoperability.
The Conflict: Accolade wanted to make games for the Sega Genesis without paying licensing fees. They disassembled Sega’s code to understand how the console "talked" to the cartridges.
The Ruling: The court ruled that disassembling code to understand its "unprotected functional elements" is Fair Use, provided there is no other way to gain that information for interoperability. This supports your right to scan hardware to understand how a driver needs to behave.
Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc. (1992)
This case established the "Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison" test, which is still used today to see if a program is a "copy."
The Strategy: After realizing an employee had copied code from a competitor, Altai performed a "Clean Room" rewrite. They used a fresh team of programmers who only had access to the functional specs, not the infringing code.
The Ruling: The court found the new version did not infringe. They ruled that elements of a program dictated by efficiency or external factors (like hardware compatibility) are not protected by copyright.
