Almost all of WDC's income comes from licensing IP, not from selling actual parts. Their license fees are piddly cheap compared to lawyer costs though, so if there's any risk of conflict, why not just pay it, or at least talk to them. It would cost a teensy fraction as much as manufacturing equipment would. WDC might be glad for anything that promotes even the old 65xx stuff. Kevin did say he wanted to produce the other Commodore ICs too though, which would include the CIA, the VIC, the TED, certain memory (according to his post, although I didn't know Commodore made memories), etc., things that WDC has not been involved with.