"Winston" wrote in message
...
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:
fired this volley in
:

What if HE received money for doing that reverse
engineering?


Indeed, he would be guilt of copyright infringement or patent violation.

Most "licenses to use" contain language to prevent reverse-engineering.
Lacking that, the fact that you (um, HE) divulged to someone else the
details to the degree necessary to reproduce the [object, process,
program, take your pick] is, in itself, an infringement. If 'he' had
kept it to 'himself' it would have only been an academic exercise. The
payment makes it "industrial espionage", which isn't taken lightly in any
circles.

Luckily, HE was working for a well known company
that is immune to legal prosecution.

LLoyd (who's presently prosecuting a copyright violation of his own work)

Good luck!

--Winston

I think Lloyd is not quite correct. He would be correct if you are talking
about something like software that is licensed, and then the restriction
against reverse engineering is due to the contract you entered into with the
licensor. However, if you buy something with a circuit board there is
absolutely no reason you can not reverse engineer the circuit and publish
the results even if it is patented. In fact the patent is already supposed
to disclose the best embodiment of the invention known to the inventor at
the time of filing.

The only thing you can not do is to advocate that people break the law by
telling them they should make copies of the invention. An example of that
might be where you sell the schematic and all the components in a kit. The
only exception is that someone can make a copy for "purely philosophical
inquiry" (i.e. non-applied scientific research).

Note: I am not a patent lawyer, but I have spent waaay too much time talking
with them.