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''Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc.'', 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied American intellectual property law to the reverse engineering of computer software. Stemming from the publishing of several Sega Genesis games by video game publisher Accolade, which had disassembled Genesis software in order to publish games without being licensed by Sega, the case involved several overlapping issues, including the scope of copyright, permissible uses for trademarks, and the scope of the fair use doctrine for computer code. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which ruled in favor of Sega and issued an injunction against Accolade preventing them from publishing any more games for the Genesis and requiring them to recall all the existing Genesis games they had for sale. Accolade appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit on the grounds that their reverse engineering of the Genesis was protected under fair use. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's order and ruled that Accolade's use of reverse engineering to publish Genesis titles was protected under fair use, and that its alleged violation of Sega trademarks was the fault of Sega. The case is frequently cited in matters involving reverse engineering and fair use under copyright law. ==Background== In March 1984, Sega Enterprises Ltd. was purchased by its former CEO, David Rosen, along with a group of backers. Hayao Nakayama, one of these backers, was named the new CEO of Sega. Following the crash of the arcade industry, Nakayama decided to focus development efforts on the home console market.〔 During this time, Sega became concerned about software and hardware piracy in Southeast Asia, and particularly in Taiwan. Taiwan was not a signatory of the Berne Convention on copyright, limiting Sega's legal options in that region. However, Taiwan did allow prosecution for trademark infringement.〔 Though Sega had created security systems in their consoles to keep their software from being pirated and to keep unlicensed publishers out, much like its competitor Nintendo,〔 counterfeiters had discovered ways to prevent the Sega trademark from appearing on their games, bypassing the trademark altogether.〔 After the release of the Sega Genesis in 1989, video game publisher Accolade began exploring options to release some of their PC game titles onto the console. At the time, however, Sega had a licensing deal in place for third-party developers that increased the costs to the developer. According to Accolade co-founder Alan Miller, "One pays them between $10 and $15 per cartridge on top of the real hardware manufacturing costs, so it about doubles the cost of goods to the independent publisher."〔 In addition to this, Sega required that it would be the exclusive publisher of Accolade's games if Accolade were to be licensed, preventing Accolade from releasing its games to other systems.〔 To get around licensing, Accolade chose to seek an alternative way to bring their games to the Genesis by purchasing a console in order to decompile the executable code of three Genesis games and use it to program their new cartridges in a way that would allow them to disable the security lockouts that prevented playing of unlicensed games.〔〔 This was done successfully to bring ''Ishido: The Way of Stones'' to the Genesis in 1990.〔 In doing so, Accolade had also copied Sega's copyrighted game code multiple times in order to reverse engineer the software of Sega's licensed Genesis games.〔 As a result of the piracy and unlicensed development issues, Sega incorporated a technical protection mechanism into a new edition of the Genesis released in 1990, referred to as the Genesis III. This new variation of the Genesis included code known as the Trademark Security System (TMSS), which, when a game cartridge was inserted into the console, would check for the presence of the string "SEGA" at a particular point in the memory contained in the cartridge.〔 If and only if the string was present, the console would run the game, and would briefly display the message: "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD."〔 This system had a twofold effect: it added extra protection against unlicensed developers and software piracy, and it forced the Sega trademark to display when the game was powered up, making a lawsuit for trademark infringement possible if unlicensed software were to be developed.〔〔 Accolade learned of this development at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1991, at which Sega showed the new Genesis III and demonstrated it screening and rejecting an ''Ishido'' game cartridge.〔 With more games planned for the following year, Accolade successfully identified the TMSS file. They later added this file to the games ''HardBall!'', ''Star Control'', ''Mike Ditka Power Football'', and ''Turrican''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sega v. Accolade」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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