Hi Hmm. Yeah, you're right. Only that you don't share the actual RTL perse but only use it for simulation and generating a netlist and from that a .def file. It's kind of a legal discussion[1] whether a DEF/Magic/GDS2 layout is actually covered by copyright or whether one has to register a Gebrauchsmuster for it already.
Cheers David
[1] https://www.commarts.com/columns/is-it-true-that-copyright-doesn-t-protect-g...
On Wednesday, 18 July 2018 3:14:14 AM HKT Staf Verhaegen wrote:
I think this statement is not right. RTL code like VHDL and Verilog is technology independent and do fall under copyright law. AFAIK, it's the GDSII, masks and chips fall under another regime. I'm no expert but I do think this means that if you buy a chip, you may reverse engineer the chip and then make your own version without needing to obey the license of the RTL of the original chip. If you use the RTL of the original chip you need to obey it's license.