TiVo Community Forum Archive 1 (http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/index.php)
- TiVo Underground (http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?forumid=8)
-- Warning: There is only one genuine Turbonet card (http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?threadid=114944)

I agree with MighTivo on the legal grounds to sue. They copied his design, that is illegal. If they made thier own design, even if it were made to be compatible with Turbonet, they would be fine. The card I got looks exactly like the pics from 9thTee, and was marketed and sold as a TurboNet. The name alone violates trademark law, if the board is layed out the same (as it seems to be) it violates copyright law. An original design would not have the same board layout, similiar maybe, but not the same. Even a computer autorouter will not always put the traces in exactly the same place on multipule runs from the same board design/schematic. Add to that the location of the components and pads on the board, and you can tell if a design was ripped off. I assume Jaffa did all this before raising a stink about it. Based on available evidence, whoever is responsible for this broke the law and liely will end up paying some big money out in damages. Doesn't sound like he's very worried about the driver to me, just the hardware.

As for driver source, the GPL only says source must be available. It doesn't say it has to be free (beer) or on the internet at all. He can require you to buy a CD from him with the code. He can't stop you from distributing it once you buy it though. It's also entirely possible his driver is NOT derived from GPL code. He's smart enough to design a custom 100BT ethernet card for a closed system, I think he can certainly write the driver for it without too much hassle. The custom nature of the card may have required a custom driver anyway.