Sega Enterprises Ltd., a Japanese Corporation v. Accolade, Inc., a California Corporation

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:

This case presents several difficult questions of first impression involving our copyright and trademark laws. 1 We are asked to determine, first, whether the Copyright Act permits persons who are neither copyright holders nor licensees to disassemble a copyrighted computer program in order to gain an understanding of the unprotected functional elements of the program. In light of the public policies underlying the Act, we conclude that, when the person seeking the understanding has a legitimate reason for doing so and when no other means of access to the unprotected…