Hey curious mkii ... AMD was licensed by Intel to produce chips in the 386 days because Intel didn't have the capacity to produce enough chips for the market... get your facts straight.

And yes MS got aways with outright stealing Stacker's drive compression technology and used the "We didn't have the code so how could we infringe upon the code if we created it from scratch" kinda strange how MS made sure that soon after the idea alone can't be copied 
nevermind the code.

Yeah this was before most "Techies" were even a glimmer in the eyes of their parents.

But it is pathetic that someone is trying to claim infringement when this is for kids damn it. What ever this guy has no morals.

Not sure on the answer to that...fully

as far as i know it fully depends on the individual companies licensing agreement...
and patents (for US companies)

if the idea is patented no reverse engineering is allowed. nothing of the same idea is allowed.

in the copyright/usage terms ( EULA) of the driver there would have to be a clause stating that the use of the driver may not involve reverse engeneering....

am I the only one who reads the EULA before I install stuff or has someone else noticed that?

If they used the driver in violation of its agreed usage rights...then they can get sued. If its not in there like..

most GPL allows for modification and reverse engineering (so long as it gets back to the public for free) 

hope that helps...thats all I got

(anyone feel free to correct on anything incorrect)

"Please send bank account details"

Got to love how people slide these ignorant comments when there is a tech story with ties to Nigeria. 

The scam was started 500 years ago in Spain. Spanish Captains would send leter to British Nobility asking for money with a promiss of getting tons more once they got back to Europe.

Pick on the poor people of this planet cause they follow in your footsteps.

AMD certainly started out in the x86 market by reverse engineering Intel chips

I thought reverse engineering was allowed if you kept to some rules, isn't that how MS started out? (I'm serious)