Author(s)
Source
Yale Law Journal, Vol. 111, pp. 1575-1663, 2002
Summary
This looks at law relating to studying man-made objects to figure out how they work, “reverse engineering.”
Policy Relevance
Reverse engineering can often benefit consumers and competition, but some narrow restrictions make sense.
Main Points
- In many areas of manufacturing, using reverse engineering to figure out a firm’s trade secrets is allowed. Laws restricting reverse engineering are more common in information-related areas like software, computer chips, and entertainment media.
- Legal restrictions usually make sense when a reverse engineer can easily capture almost all of the knowledge and value of a product just by studying it; this is common with information goods, and often harder with manufactured goods.
- Legal restrictions should balance harm to competition from stopping reverse engineering against harm to innovators from letting copycats cut into their profits.
- Legally, computer chip makers may study competitors’ chips to learn how they work and use the information in a new chip, but the second maker must contribute engineering of his own, raising his costs. This makes sense and helped the chip industry grow.
- Software copyright cases make sense in allowing reverse engineering so a firm can make its software work with that of a competitor.
- Incentives to develop new platforms such as an operating system are lower if reverse engineering is allowed. But competitors can use reverse engineering to stop a platform from “tipping” and controlling the market.
- It might harm competition for courts to enforce contracts that stop reverse engineering of software.
- With music and movies, the law limiting reverse engineering of technology used to prevent copying goes too far. More reverse engineering should be allowed.
- Limits on reverse engineering need not require banning it completely.
