1992), is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied American intellectual property law to the reverse engineering of computer software.

[6] If and only if the string was present, the console would run the game, and would briefly display the message: "Produced by or under license from Sega Enterprises LTD."[1] This system had a twofold effect: it added extra protection against unlicensed developers and software piracy, and it forced the Sega trademark to display when the game was powered up, making a lawsuit for trademark infringement possible if unlicensed software were to be developed.

They later added this code to the games HardBall!, Star Control, Mike Ditka Power Football, and Turrican.

According to Accolade co-founder Alan Miller, "Just to fight the injunction, we had to pay at least half a million dollars in legal fees.

[8] Amicus briefs were also submitted by the American Committee for Interoperable Systems, the Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association, and copyright law professor Dennis S. Karjala from Arizona State University.

"[1] The court then went on to cite Anti-Monopoly v. General Mills Fun Group, which states in reference to the Lanham Act, "The trademark is misused if it serves to limit competition in the manufacture and sales of a product.

"[9] The judges in the case had decided that Sega had violated this provision of the act by utilizing its trademark to limit competition for software for its console.

As noted by Judge Reinhardt in writing the opinion of the court, the TMSS file "contains approximately twenty to twenty-five bytes of data.

Despite claims from Sega's attorneys that the company had invested much time and effort into developing the Genesis, and that Accolade was capitalizing on this time and energy, the court rejected these claims by noting that U.S. Supreme Court in Feist v. Rural Publications had unequivocally rejected the notion that copyright protection could be based on the "sweat of the brow," i.e., that a work was entitled to copyright because of the amount of effort it took to create it.

On the matter of reverse engineering as a process, the court concluded that "where disassembly is the only way to gain access to the ideas and functional elements embodied in a copyrighted computer program and where there is a legitimate reason for seeking such access, disassembly is a fair use of the copyrighted work, as a matter of law.

"[1][6] On August 28, 1992, the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's preliminary injunction and ruled that Accolade's decompilation of the Sega software constituted fair use.

[11] The court's written opinion followed on October 20 and noted that the use of the software was non-exploitative, despite being commercial,[1][12] and that the trademark infringement, being required by the TMSS for a Genesis game to run on the system, was inadvertently triggered by a fair use act and the fault of Sega for causing false labeling.

[11][14] On January 8, 1993, with Sega's petition for a rehearing still pending, the court took the unusual step of amending its October 20, 1992 opinion and lifted the injunction preventing Accolade from developing or selling Genesis software.

As a part of this settlement, Accolade became an official licensee of Sega, and later developed and released Barkley Shut Up and Jam!

Not only are we pleased to settle this case amicably, we've also turned a corner in our association with Accolade and now look forward to a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship in the future."

The case also helped establish guidelines for permissible reverse engineering; for example, American computer programmer Andrew Schulman cited the decision with approval in his 1994 book "Undocumented Dos," which explored and revealed undocumented functionality in Microsoft operating systems that he had uncovered using disassembly and reverse engineering.

[12] Among the influences of the decision include Sega v. Accolade's effect on the criteria for fair use and the responsibilities of trademark holders in legal examinations.

Likewise, the nature of the work was also given less weight, essentially establishing a two-factor approach to evaluating fair use in the purpose of use and impact on the market.

[13] Sega v. Accolade also served to help establish that the functional principles of computer software cannot be protected by copyright law.