Sega v. Accolade

Citation: Sega Enters., Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510, 24 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1561 (9th Cir. 1992).

Factual Background
Accolade sought to develop a videogame that would operate on the Sega Genesis videogame system. To do so Accolade had to determine the password required by the Genesis system. The only way to determine the password was to decompile the object code of one of Sega's videogames to produce a translation of the source code. As a necessary step in this reverse engineering procedure, Accolade had to make a copy of the Sega object code. Sega sued Accolade for copyright infringement based on its copying of the object code.

Appellate Court Decision
The Ninth Circuit held that the where reverse engineering is the only way to access the ideas and the functional elements of the work, such copying is a fair use.

The court stated that "[w]e are in wholehearted agreement with the Second Circuit's recent observation that '[t]hus far, many of the decisions in this area [application of copyright law to software] reflect the courts' attempt to fit the proverbial square peg in a round hole.'"