Accolade vs. Sega

Accolade vs. Sega

Sega sued & U.S. District Court in San Francisco initially agreed, issuing an injunction for Accolade

Accolade appealed to a higher court, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

• Source codes were owned & copyrighted by Sega
• Illegally made copies of Sega's source code
• No right to duplicate or reverse engineer source code
• Accolade's new games had to include Sega's source code also owned by Sega

• Secret codes and security devices are a public interface standard & public property
• Permissible to duplicate source code because it was merely a way of gaining access to interface standard on Genesis consoles
• Secret codes were public property

Lapuz

Maglaque

Laus

Pelinggon

Planas

Decompiling

"attempt to reverse two-step process through which the program was originally produced"

Accolade's arguments eventually won out. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned earlier decision & agreed with Accolade.

Many legal experts disagreed with the decision.

Source code & security devices were not like interface standard most companies had to agree on.

How is software produced?

Which of these views do you most agree with and which do you think is most appropriate for this case?

1. Analyze this case from the perspective of each of the theories of private property described in this chapter.

• Two-step process

2. Do you agree that Accolade had “really stolen” Sega’s property? Why or why not?

We agree with Locke's theory of private property.

It is important to have ethics concerning intellectual property and the protection of an individual’s property rights.

Step 1: Write program using software language that is easily understood by an engineer who knows the language which consists of comprehensible instructions.

Step 2: Enter source code into computer to compile codes into machine language consisting of zeros & ones.

Locke's theory of private property:

Sega was the sole owner of the codes on the Genesis because it was Sega who produced those codes.

Utilitarian theory of private property:

Sega would lose all incentives to create games, consoles, or share new ideas for the benefit of the market.

Marxist theory of private property:

In favor with Accolade’s argument in which the Genesis console is considered as public interface standard and cannot be privately owned by anyone.

YES, we agree that Accolade had stolen Sega’s property because if those codes were intended for public use, it would not have been kept secret.

Thank you!

Reverse Engineering

In the early 1990s...

"the process of analyzing a product to discover how it was made and how it works"

• Sega marketed the "Genesis"
• Includes new secret codes and security devices
• Other game programs, including Accolade's, no longer worked on it
• Accolade started reverse engineering the Genesis and its games

3. In your judgment, did Accolade go too far in trying to discover the underlying source code of Sega’s programs? Does a company have a right to reverse engineer any product it wants?

What is Accolade?

Yes, they did go too far that they were willing to surpass ethics of private ownership.

No clear cut answer for having the right to reverse engineer any product.

• small software company
• located in San Jose, California
• profits from making games compatible with Sega game consoles
• not licensed by Sega