copyrights, patents, and helping programmers ?

[AdmiralAK]

OK I am in need of a little legal advice, as well as some encouragement

I have found a couple of pieces of software floating on the internet that localize my newton to russian (make text, fonts, and menus and all that appear in russian) which I use from time to time on my newton. I thought that this package was made by a hobbyist so I used it.

BEfore finding this package I contacted paragon software which I had heard made HWR and/or localization for the newton, however their customer service/tech support told me that they NEVER made software for the newton.
Anyway, I got my iPaq, and bought several of paragons software (really nice dictionaries, and localization for the PocketPC OS, as well as other OSes)... anyway

Last week I decided I wanted to create localization packages for the newton, with the help of other newton-philes, so greek and polish are in talks at the moment. I set out to find that brilliant person that made the original russian localization package for the newton only to find out that paragon had INDEED made the original newton russian localization!!!!! (it's right on their web!!! and the tech support knew nothing about it!).

Now this is my dillema, what is the statute of limitations on coryrighted code? Would I be able to ask them to give me their code so that I could make a greek and polish localization ? This product was made in 1996, and NO newton has been sold officially since mid 1997.

I feel kinda weird asking them sort source code cause I get the feeling that they are going to tell me to F* off

Any ideas ?

[ksuther]

I doubt they'll let you have it, even if it's old At one point they did make it and sell it.
Oh well, some old software just dies because of that