patents for legacy processors

[curious_mind]

I have found several open cores for motorola 68k processors on the web. I was interested to know whether it is still legal to use those very processors cores for commercial applications?
How to know whether patent rights are still valid?

 

[danadakk]

My inclination would to be to contact Freescale, now merged into NXP, their legal department
for comment. And if you are an EE step out of that loop, or at least monitor from "afar".....

Google "FPGA 68000 core", some interesting info there.


Regards, Dana.

 

[Jerryxm]

Given that the M68K was introduced in the late 1970s, and patents (at least in the U.S.) are good for 17 years, it's very unlikely that any patents related to the 68000 are still in effect.