I''ve heard of major corperations, like Microsoft, that have reverse-engineered other people''s software. How do they do this legaly?

Actually ... I believe that if an algorith is public domain, then the implementation of the algorithm is also public domain. They could reverse engineer a portion of the code legally.

But I don''t know what I am talking about so I probably am wrong.



_______________________________
It''s not reality that''s important, but how you perceive things.

A man''s reach should exceed his grasp.

Reverse engineering isn''t necessarily illegal in it self, at least not in most countries. Some countries (like the US, I think) have laws that prohibits reverse engineering for certain purposes (ie whether it''s legal or not depends on your intent). But for the most part it''s what you do with the knowledge gained that will matter - any copyrights and patents associated with the original product will still apply, obviously.

Algorithms cannot be copyrighted, but it''s possible to copyright particular implementations of algorithms. The best way to avoid liability for reverse-engineering is to do what is called a "clean room" implementation of the algorithm: One group of programmers looks at the original machine code and, without using any of the original code, describes its operation to a second group of people who have never come into contact with the original code.

Ahh.. the classic reverse engineering legality dilemma.


Reverse engineering is legal for personal use. As long as you don't publically release any information gained from the reverse engineering, you're ok. The "bunnie" guy who hacked the XBox to hell was legally ok doing what he was doing. He once put up data from one of the chips, but Microsoft called him and told him to remove it.

A classic example of this is how (I forget which company) reverse engineered Sega's Genesis console so they could make programming manuals for their programmers. Sega took them to court and Sega lost.

So, if you're doing it for personal use and education, you're fine.

Im no lawyer, but it's just what I remember reading.

EDIT: Had "they lost".. sounded ambigious

[edited by - Maega on December 16, 2002 12:29:47 AM]

Reverse Engineering is legal in all cases, the real legal issues come into play regarding what you do with the info. After all a company cant stop you from buying their product going home and examining what makes it tick. This is why a lot of companies have information that they dont patent so that other companies cant find out about it, which leads to the whole dilemma of what to patent and what not to. Now what is illegal is if you take your newfound information and create an exact replica and try to sell it as competition. Your product has to have some changes to make it different enough but that is a whole other grey area.


Apparently my sig must use proper programming.
srand(time(NULL));
int i=rand()%100;
PickWittyQuote(i);

From what I have seen in heard...

You have one engineer reverse engineer the code/object and write the specs on that. You then take it to your lawyer let him check it out. Then you have to give it to a third person who has not seen the object or helped you take it apart, and from the specs he writes or build the thing without you helping or being involved.

At least that how I think compaq did it way back when...

[edited by - CtrlAltDel on December 17, 2002 8:33:14 AM]

Think of it like this, Intel changed the name of their processors from x86 to Pentium because they were told they couldn''t copyright numbers......

If you''re gonna reverse engineer something, use a hex editor and disassembler. It reduces every program or file you can think of to a very long number. And as Pentium found out, you can''t copyright a number =-)

However, remember, there is no algorithm for government AI... They shot down Napster, but to this day, Kazaa remains mainstream.

"You TK''ed my chicken!"

Tac-tics: Copyright applies even if you''re working from the hex representation of a protected program. Intel''s decision to adopt processor names such as Pentium has nothing to do with copyright; it is a trademark issue. They couldn''t trademark numerical names such as 486, so they switched to the Pentium brand for their would-be 586.

The way I understand it Reverse Engeneering is perfectly leagal as long as you:

A) Haven''t looked at the source (of any kind, design docs, code, schematics, ect).
B) The idea itself is not patented.

Examples:

The SAMBA project reverse engeneered almost the entire microsoft file sharing protocol and no leagal action has been taken against them.

IBM had a monopoly on PCs at one time because of the BIOS. It was reverse engeneered and suddenly many companies made PCs. IBM sued some of them and lost.

OBTW, IANAL