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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clarksterh who wrote (56457)	10/30/2006 9:12:08 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 196812

but the problem is that once it is compiled it is virtually impossible to tell what the source was. Not knowing anything about software, I'm sure I'm going to stick my foot in my mouth with this comment. Here goes anyway. I see software code as a highly specialized language which is used to instruct chips what to do. Thus, like any language, software code is probably individualized to a very great extent, especially as the instructions become more complex. If this is the case, portions of Q's code, even if they exist in snippets, might be identified within BRCM's code if anyone takes the time to inspect it. Bits and pieces may be capable of identification to suggest that they've been stolen because of the unlikely possibility that any two code writers would use the same approach to achieve the same thing. It would probably take a hell of a lot of work, but at the end of the day a lawyer armed with many similarities might be able to argue convincingly that there's theft/plagiarism because there are too many similarities. As a lawyer, I think that's how I would approach it but I'm ignorant of the possibilities for duplication of software. A good code plagiarist might simply see what is intended as a result by a snippet of code, then subtly change it to avoid detection while achieving the same result in a different way.