Appellate decision in Sega v. Accolade 977 F2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992)
977 F2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992); 93 Daily Journal DAR 304
SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD., a Japanese corporation, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
ACCOLADE, INC., a California corporation, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 92-15655
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
July 20, 1992, Argued and Submitted, San Francisco, California
January 6, 1993, Filed
PRIOR HISTORY: Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern
District of California. D.C. No. CV-91-3871-BAC. Barbara A. Caulfield, District Judge,
Presiding.
COUNSEL:
William S. Coats, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, San Francisco, California, for the
defendant-appellant.
Joel Linzner, Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May, Oakland, California, for the plaintiff-
appellee.
Dennis S. Karjala, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, for amicus curiae
Copyright
Law Professors.
Peter M. C. Choy, American Committee for Interoperable Systems, Mountain View,
California, for amicus curiae American Committee for Interoperable Systems.
John Haven Chapman, Chapman, Moran, Hubbard, Glazer & Zimmerman, Stamford,
Connecticut; Thomas N. White, Santa Clara, California, for amicus curiae Computer and
Communications Industry Association.
Morton David Goldberg, Schwab, Goldberg, Price & Dannay, New York, New York for
amicus curiae Computer & Business Equipment Manufactures Association, et al.
JUDGES: Before: William C. Canby, Jr., Stephen Reinhardt, and Edward Leavy, Circuit
Judges.
Opinion by Judge Reinhardt.
OPINION: ORDER AND AMENDED OPINION
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:
This case presents several difficult questions of first impression involving our copyright
and trademark laws. n1 We are asked to determine, first, whether the Copyright Act
permits persons who are neither copyright holders nor licensees to disassemble a
copyrighted computer program in order to gain an understanding of the unprotected
functional elements of the program. In light of the public policies underlying the Act, we
conclude that, when the person seeking the understanding has a legitimate reason for
doing so and when no other means of access to the unprotected elements exists, such
SNIPPETS:
Appellate decision in Sega v. Accolade 977 F2d 1510 (9th Cir.
SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD., a Japanese corporation, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ACCOLADE, INC., a
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
July 20, 1992, Argued and Submitted, San Francisco, California January 6, 1993, Filed
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern
Law Professors.
n1 We are asked to determine, first, whether the Copyright Act permits persons who are
we must decide the legal consequences under the Lanham Trademark Act of a computer
Accordingly, we reverse the district court's grant of a preliminary injunction in favor of
We prefer to leave the decision on that question to the district court initially.
Background Plaintiff-appellee Sega Enterprises, Ltd., a Japanese corporation, and its
Prior to rendering its own games compatible with the Genesis console, Accolade explored the
it "reverse engineered" Sega's video game programs in order to discover the requirements for
At the end of the reverse engineering process, Accolade created a development manual that
In order to operate a computer, source code must be translated into computer readable form,
A program written in source code is translated into object code using a computer program
Sega began to explore methods of protecting its trademark rights in the Genesis and
the TMSS initialization code then prompts a visual display for approximately three seconds
According to Accolade, it did not learn until after the Genesis III was released on the
n3 On November 29, 1991, Sega amended its complaint to include a claim for copyright
At the hearing, counsel for Sega produced two game cartridges which, he represented,
The district court concluded that the TMSS code was not functional and that Accolade could
With respect to Sega's copyright claim, the district court rejected Accolade's contention
Second, it argues that disassembly of object code in order to gain an understanding of the
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