Royalty-Free Non-Exclusive License USB Product-ID ================================================= Version 2006-06-19 OBJECTIVE DEVELOPMENT Software GmbH hereby grants you the non-exclusive right to use three USB.org vendor-ID (VID) / product-ID (PID) pairs with products based on Objective Development's firmware-only USB driver for Atmel AVR microcontrollers: * VID = 5824 (=0x16c0) / PID = 1500 (=0x5dc) for devices implementing no USB device class (vendor-class devices with USB class = 0xff). Devices using this pair will be referred to as "VENDOR CLASS" devices. * VID = 5824 (=0x16c0) / PID = 1503 (=0x5df) for HID class devices (excluding mice and keyboards). Devices using this pair will be referred to as "HID CLASS" devices. * VID = 5824 (=0x16c0) / PID = 1505 (=0x5e1) for CDC class modem devices Devices using this pair will be referred to as "CDC-ACM CLASS" devices. Since the granted right is non-exclusive, the same VID/PID pairs may be used by many companies and individuals for different products. To avoid conflicts, your device and host driver software MUST adhere to the rules outlined below. OBJECTIVE DEVELOPMENT Software GmbH has licensed these VID/PID pairs from Wouter van Ooijen (see www.voti.nl), who has licensed the VID from the USB Implementers Forum, Inc. (see www.usb.org). The VID is registered for the company name "Van Ooijen Technische Informatica". RULES AND RESTRICTIONS ====================== (1) The USB device MUST provide a textual representation of the manufacturer and product identification. The manufacturer identification MUST be available at least in USB language 0x0409 (English/US). (2) The textual manufacturer identification MUST contain either an Internet domain name (e.g. "mycompany.com") registered and owned by you, or an e-mail address under your control (e.g. "[e-mail]"). You can embed the domain name or e-mail address in any string you like, e.g. "Objective Development http://www.obdev.at/avrusb/". (3) You are responsible for retaining ownership of the domain or e-mail address for as long as any of your products are in use. (4) You may choose any string for the textual product identification, as long as this string is unique within the scope of your textual manufacturer identification. (5) Matching of device-specific drivers MUST be based on the textual manufacturer and product identification in addition to the usual VID/PID matching. This means that operating system features which are based on VID/PID matching only (e.g. Windows kernel level drivers, automatic actions when the device is plugged in etc) MUST NOT be used. The driver matching MUST be a comparison of the entire strings, NOT a sub-string match. For CDC-ACM CLASS devices, a generic class driver should be used and the matching is based on the USB device class. (6) The extent to which VID/PID matching is allowed for non device-specific drivers or features depends on the operating system and particular VID/PID pair used: * Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD and other Unixes: No VID/PID matching is required and hence no VID/PID-only matching is allowed at all. * Windows: The operating system performs VID/PID matching for the kernel level driver. You are REQUIRED to use libusb-win32 (see http://libusb-win32.sourceforge.net/) as the kernel level driver for VENDOR CLASS devices. HID CLASS devices all use the generic HID class driver shipped with Windows, except mice and keyboards. You therefore MUST NOT use any of the shared VID/PID pairs for mice or keyboards. CDC-ACM CLASS devices require a ".inf" file which matches on the VID/PID pair. This ".inf" file MUST load the "usbser" driver to configure the device as modem (COM-port). (7) OBJECTIVE DEVELOPMENT Software GmbH disclaims all liability for any problems which are caused by the shared use of these VID/PID pairs. You have been warned that the sharing of VID/PID pairs may cause problems. If you want to avoid them, get your own VID/PID pair for exclusive use. HOW TO IMPLEMENT THESE RULES ============================ The following rules are for VENDOR CLASS and HID CLASS devices. CDC-ACM CLASS devices use the operating system's class driver and don't need a custom driver. The host driver MUST iterate over all devices with the given VID/PID numbers in their device descriptors and query the string representation for the manufacturer name in USB language 0x0409 (English/US). It MUST compare the ENTIRE string with your textual manufacturer identification chosen in (2) above. A substring search for your domain or e-mail address is NOT acceptable. The driver MUST NOT touch the device (other than querying the descriptors) unless the strings match. For all USB devices with matching VID/PID and textual manufacturer identification, the host driver must query the textual product identification and string-compare it with the name of the product it can control. It may only initialize the device if the product matches exactly. Objective Development provides examples for these matching rules with the "PowerSwitch" project (using libusb) and with the "Automator" project (using Windows calls on Windows and libusb on Unix). Technical Notes: ================ Sharing the same VID/PID pair among devices is possible as long as ALL drivers which match the VID/PID also perform matching on the textual identification strings. This is easy on all operating systems except Windows, since Windows establishes a static connection between the VID/PID pair and a kernel level driver. All devices with the same VID/PID pair must therefore use THE SAME kernel level driver. We therefore demand that you use libusb-win32 for VENDOR CLASS devices. This is a generic kernel level driver which allows all types of USB access for user space applications. This is only a partial solution of the problem, though, because different device drivers may come with different versions of libusb-win32 and they may not work with the libusb version of the respective other driver. You are therefore encouraged to test your driver against a broad range of libusb-win32 versions. Do not use new features in new versions, or check for their existence before you use them. When a new libusb-win32 becomes available, make sure that your driver is compatible with it. For HID CLASS devices it is necessary that all those devices bind to the same kernel driver: Microsoft's generic USB HID driver. This is true for all HID devices except those with a specialized driver. Currently, the only HIDs with specialized drivers are mice and keyboards. You therefore MUST NOT use a shared VID/PID with mouse and keyboard devices. Sharing the same VID/PID among different products is unusual and probably violates the USB specification. If you do it, you do it at your own risk. To avoid possible incompatibilities, we highly recommend that you get your own VID/PID pair if you intend to sell your product. Objective Development's commercial licenses for AVR-USB include a PID for unrestricted exclusive use.