Wikipedia:Main Page history/2013 October 20

Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc. was a decision in 1992 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that applied American intellectual property law to the reverse engineering of computer software. Issues in the case included the scope of copyright, permissible uses for trademarks, and the scope of the fair use doctrine for computer code. It arose after video game publisher Accolade published several games for the Sega Genesis (pictured), disassembling it to publish games without being licensed by Sega. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Sega, preventing Accolade from publishing any more games for the Genesis and requiring them to recall all of their Genesis games on sale. Accolade appealed on the grounds that their reverse engineering of the Genesis was protected under fair use. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's order and ruled that Accolade's use of reverse engineering to publish Genesis titles was protected under fair use, and that its alleged violation of Sega trademarks was the fault of Sega. The case is frequently cited in matters involving reverse engineering and fair use under copyright law. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

• ... that Altenburg Abbey (pictured), the Baroque structure which replaced the earlier Romanesque abbey, is said to be one of the finest in Austria?
• ... that Swedish television presenter Carin Hjulström presented Melodifestivalen 1990?
• ... that there were around 525 Filipinos in Poland as of September 2012, and that most of them resided in the country temporarily?
• ... that the Daniel S. Schanck Observatory, Rutgers University's first astronomical observatory, was designed after the Tower of the Winds in Athens' ancient agora?
• ... that Jacques Dutronc's Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille was voted best French-language single of all time in a poll of music critics?
• ... that it is customary in England to give bees a slice of wedding cake?

• Chad, Nigeria, Chile, Lithuania, and Saudi Arabia are elected to the United Nations Security Council, but Saudi Arabia declines its seat.
• U.S. President Barack Obama signs a bill passed by Congress to reopen the federal government and raise the debt limit.
• Lao Airlines Flight 301 (aircraft type pictured) crashes on approach to Pakse Airport, Laos, killing all 49 people on board.
• A 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes the Philippines, resulting in more than 100 deaths.
• American economists Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert J. Shiller win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their empirical analysis of asset prices.

October 20: Birth of the Báb, a holy day in the Bahá'í Faith

• 1572 – Eighty Years' War: Soldiers of the Spanish Tercios waded across the river Scheldt at its mouth, walking overnight in water to chest height, to relieve the siege of Goes in the Spanish Netherlands.
• 1740 – Per the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, Maria Theresa (pictured) assumed the throne of the Habsburg Monarchy in Austria.
• 1941 – World War II: German soldiers began a massacre of thousands of civilians in Kragujevac in Nazi-occupied Serbia.
• 1973 – Elizabeth II, in her capacity as Queen of Australia, formally opened the Sydney Opera House on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour.
• 1982 – During a UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, a large number of attendees tried to leave the Grand Sports Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium at the same time, resulting in a stampede that caused 66 deaths.

More anniversaries: October 19 – October 20 – October 21

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Sandboarding is a boardsport similar to snowboarding, but competitions take place on sand dunes rather than snow-covered mountains. Here, an aviation ordnanceman of the US Navy sandboards down a dune in Jebel Ali, Dubai.

Photo: Steven J. Weber/US Navy