>  > > In my first experiments some years ago, i wondered if tcpdumping to find
>>  > out the protocol is some kind of reverse engineering? I don't think so.
>>  > LAT is patented i think, but does Compaq care too much about this?
>>
>>  The author is based in the UK.  I _think_ reverse engineering for
>>  the purposes for interoperability is legal in the UK.  I'm fairly
>>  sure it's legal here in Ireland, so it could be an EU-wide thing.
>>
>Yes, it is. It's also so in the US; the most famous case is Compaq's
>reverse engineering and reimplementation of the IBM PC BIOS.

That's only for trade-secrets.  LAT is patented and reverse engineering
a patent still infringes on the patent.

BTW, when I worked for Digital, I owned the implementation of LAT for
ULTRIX and (for awhile) Digital UNIX.

I don't know whether Compaq retained the patent rights for LAT or
whether it transferred to Cabletron when Digital sold its network
division to them.  And if it did, did it transfer to Digital Network
Products Group (www.dnpg.com) when they split off from Cabletron.