anorton wrote:

"Winston" wrote in message
...
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.

It is based on a long history of case law. Here is a not so brief
summary of the issue. I see here the exception is a little broader than
I had thought. It is "solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity,
or for strictly
philosophical inquiry"
http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/...cott_Lowry.pdf

There has got to be an interesting story that explains
why this exemption didn't feature prominently in the
USPTO website. For example, I saw no mention in:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/general_info_concerning_patents.jsp#heading-24'
Perhaps I just glazed over it.

(...)

It probably not what you were thinking. It is just that I am the
inventor on many patents assigned to various former employers and
current clients. But the whole process of patenting something is very
tedious, times consuming, and not much fun.

And for individuals, a complete waste of time and money.

--Winston