anorton wrote:

"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.

I will tell him he scraped by *again*!

(...)

The only exception is that someone can make a copy for "purely
philosophical inquiry" (i.e. non-applied scientific research).


I ain't so sure.

The USPTO, very lightly paraphrased says:
Basically a U.S. patent is a patentee's 'license to sue'
"*to exclude others from making*, using, offering for sale,
or selling the invention throughout the United States or
importing the invention into the United States".

Emphasis is still mine.

I don't see an 'inquiry' exception.

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

'Sounds like they play in the 'gray area' legally speaking.
Not too surprising, that.

--Winston