The Supaboy - New SNES handheld from Hyperkin

[Leo_A]

Without going into too much technical detail, its because the lockout is in the software and the hardware as a sort of lock and key. Since only the hardware patients expire after twenty years, the SNES CIC lockout is still under patient by Nintendo. The same is true of the N64, so it'll be interesting to see how N64 clones end addressing this issue in the coming years - because you just know there WILL be clones.

I believe it's 15 years for patents, not 20.

If we're talking about code here, it's covered by copyrights, not patents. And copyrights are all but indefinite these days (For all intents and purposes). So you're saying the lockout chip has some code attached to it to function, which is why it's left off (It doesn't matter what's programmed into the cartridge that interacts with it, you can replicate the lockout chip and distribute it as long as it's just hardware and the copyrighted code that functions with it resides on the game cartridge)?

The fact that systems like the PSOne and N64 had embedded code necessary for the system to function is going to prevent legal clones ever appearing, I suspect. You can do something like freely create a N64 emulator these days, but you can't legally distribute the system bios necessary for it to function. That's going to remain protected by copyright laws for many years to come.

Unless they're able to legally reverse engineer it and program something that does the same things without infringing on any copyrighted code, we're never going to see legitimate clones appear for later systems (Especially more recent consoles that have full fledged operating systems).