I couldnt help but notice that in the sample paragraph on the search engine page, clearly visible is this line
“This is one reason that real attackers often resort to black box techniques.”
And so is made the associative link in the way of thinking.
To change the view requires a change of language which, I have to concede, is an utterly pathetic and most ‘unnecessary necessity’ in the modern world.
The problem is, you’re using corporate/political terminology here and ignoring the legal implications behind it.
“Intellectual Property” doesn’t exist in this context. It’s a corporate/political/pseudo-ethic gravy poured on top of:
Trade secrets.
Patents.
Copyright.
You need to keep those three apart, the “intellectual Property” slogan brings nothing.
Trade secrets is some internal company knowledge, not available to the outside world.
Think the original Coca Cola recipe. Or KFC chicken recipe.
Not patented, not copyrighted, just not available to anyone.
You can attempt to “reverse engineer” it, and it’s OK. It would be not OK to bribe some Coca Cola employee to hand you out the copy of their internal manufacturing recipe (not really possible, as they do use means to protect what theirs).
Protection of intellectual property is covered by sevral laws (at least in Europe, probably very close in the US).
It’s:
copyright (protects inidividual works, as personal expressions; think of Arts and similar like Architecture),
patent law (for technical inventions, must be disclosed to public in order to be effective; must be paid to grant the exclusive patent rights),
trade secrets (keep your knowledge secret, gives the businesses the power to enforce the insiders to keep under law-protected secrets any internal knowledge). Once the knowledge is avaliable to outside world, it stops being protected as a company trade secret. Think of those receipes, customer lists, proven suppliers etc.
No form of encryption will ensure that what’s encrypted is automatically a trade secret. However, the decryption key may be considered trade secret UNLESS found without any inside knowledge (like unloyal employee).
Copyright is limited in scope. It includes source code, but excludes lists, which is what a PCB file is.
It has always proved impossible to copyright a PCB layout, which is NOT found to be an artistic work.
What you cannot do is copy the company name on the board, as has happened with Arduino boards as that is under trademark law
Not entirely correct. Copyright law is also available for any artwork (paintings). PCB layouts, IC layouts are considered art. (Prior laws of years gone by). Copyrights are enforced for the life of the artist + 70 years.
Artwork can be copyrighted by the original art work owner even after the art has been released into the commercial domain. (Again dependent on the country of origin).
Adding a copyright symbol to a board - puts the individuals that might copy the design on alert that they might be in legal jeopardy. Boards without a copyright symbol are iffy… boards with the openhardware symbol on it are designs intended to be shared (if you follow the openhardware guidelines).
It’s the responsibility of a copyright owner to take steps to enforce violations (e.g. file legal action). In most cases it costs way too much to take such action. However - if the company has a big well paid legal department - with deep pockets. That could be bad news for the copyright thief (that’s what the law views them as). The copyright law that is enforced - is that of where the work was created - not where the work was duplicated. Enforcement might be required in multiple countries…
(I’m not a lawyer - but I do read the general guidelines to make sure that I don’t take someone elses IP.)
" Under United States Copyright Law (17 U.S.C. §§101 et seq.), circuit boards and similar products may be simultaneously protected by several copyrights. … Another thing often overlooked is that the printed circuit board (PCB) design itself is separately registrable . Pirates often just copy the board itself"
Is the whole PCB protected, probably not - but the silkscreen layer is likely. Could you add in a copyright info into the netlist that would be accepted - possibly, but gerbers, not sure?
Smart thermostat that uses a proprietary communication protocol to work with the HVAC/Furnace. There is a design flaw with the boards and they seem to fail after about four years. The company discontinued that model ($400) and have replaced it with new model ($900). The old one had been replaced under warranty once before - company will not extend replacement to it’s successor.
Right to repair - might allow a person to replace a part on the board and fix the flaw, schematics are not available, reverse engineering might be the only choice. Without a thermostat that uses the proprietary comm protocol - the full features of the HVAC/Furnace are not operable. Same problem. Reverse engineer the defective one - or - toss it out and spend ($900+dealer install fee $250) for the next generation thermostat. (the $250 bothers me as much as the price jump).
There are separate laws for IC designs, so you cannot compare. In the US I was lead to believe that the PCB was a “useful article” and not under copyright. The Gerber plots do fall under copyright and possibly the silkscreen does
The example is a great one of when reverse engineering is required. Of course it is Here I might point out that there is no apparent ‘victim’; noone clinging on to their work, property or IP, alike. Copyrights and patents will time lapse and even inventors will feel like they had their fill. This is nearly a clear-cut Clear-conscience scenario.
With the example of ‘Right to repair’, with the release of schematics and whitepapers which will be required (and a lot of manufacturers already always have done), no amount of reverse engineering would actually be required.
The problem we face in the UK comes at a later stage with regard to relaxing the rules around who can legally perform the repairs and the ‘British Standards’ that are associated with the replacement parts and the repairs themselves. To the end user this would not actually improve any situation in the way it was meant to. We will be forced to pay for expensive labour and parts, anyway. I guarantee.
I actually have always just repaired my own stuff. I mean… why wouldnt you, right?
IP law is complex, and if you have something you want to protect, it is really worth consulting an expert (IP lawyer) to make sure you get it right…
The way your board looks and its exact layout are protected by copyright. There are subtle differences between the different countries, but in essence it is a “weak” protection for a PCB, since I think it is enough for a ‘copycat’ to re-layout your design and they have ‘their own’ version, no longer protected by your copyright. And we know how easy it is to create layouts using powerful EDA tools like KiCad…
I’m going to (perhaps controversially) say that most designs aren’t worth protecting - after all when do we really do something completely new? But if you really have done something completely new, then patents are the way to go. A patent will give you broader protection against people creating devices that do the ‘same thing in the same way’, but they are expensive (for individual’s budgets), onerous to obtain and geographically limited.
But for most circuits out there you will probably find “prior art” - i.e. someone has done it before…
Often a good way to protect your hardware is with the software - it is less visible and can be harder to reverse engineer from the outside. It is protected by copyright, and could be protected using technical means e.g. “Digital Rights Management”. And circumventing DRM systems can (at least in some jurisdictions, see “DMCA”) be illegal in itself.
Also keep in mind that even if you do obtain a patent, or someone violates your copyright, you have to take legal action to enforce it - this can get expensive, and is probably quite impossible in many geographies. So sadly, enforcing your rights against copycats probably only makes sense for products that are already commercially successful.
And finally, reverse engineering is not copying! It is learning! And until the reverse engineer takes her findings public by publishing them (or worse, creating copycat products) she certainly has not done anything wrong. Learning is never wrong!
I’ve been taking stuff apart to see how it works from around the same time I could walk and hold a screwdriver.
It was only a lot of years later that I discovered some people call this “reverse engineering”. Making that illegal would be completely bonkers, but politics is a load of crap, commercial interests are high and therefore there is a big lobbying budget.
(Those lobbyers should be thrown in jail, because it’s not much more than veiled bribes. I really do not understand why that lobbying is legal)
I have some doubt that a PCB layout can be copyrighted. There probably have been lawsuits about this, but I never bothered to look up the details.
I do like some form of IP protection, but excluding competition from a market and then driving up the price is much too common practice in this “western” world.
As of yet I have not seen any evidence that reverse engineering in itself would be illegal (then we’d ave to jail 6 year old kids) but at some point the water starts getting murkier. If you follow the duckduck link above you find lots of companies who specialize in this area, and some have long lists of explanations and examples of good reasons for doing this.
This company (also located in USA)
and one of the reasons they state for reverse engineering is:
Produce less costly PCBs: If you have a competitor selling a PCB at a high price, you can reverse engineer it to determine how much it actually costs to produce. Companies will often sell a PCB at a higher cost due to a lack of competition. By determining how much it costs to make the PCB, you could produce a similar one at a more cost-effective price, helping you attract new customers who previously didn’t have any other options.
While this discussion is very interesting, it’s totally off-topic even for our original sidestep, namely if “reverse engineering” for file format support is problematic or not.
If we reverse engineer a file format we don’t reverse engineer software to know how a file format works. We use software normally to produce files. We reverse engineer those files which are our own IP, and it can’t be compared to reverse engineering a piece of software or a device.
Somebody already noticed that having file format import and support is usual in software. It’s often even a selling point. It couldn’t be so if it wouldn’t be legal. I don’t believe all those EDA companies have contracts with other EDA companies allowing this! And EDA is just one small fraction of application domains which use files. If someone says reverse engineering for file format compatibility is illegal or even considered ethically wrong, they must show to me that:
most of file exports in all software is made after asking permission from the original file format owner
there exist legal precedents in court for considering this kind of reverse engineering illegal.
So, you have a file format that saves data. That data is YOUR data, it does NOT belong to the designer of the software.
Over at https://www.bclplaw.com/en-GB/insights/does-copyright-protect-data-file-formats.html, where copyright in the EU is discussed, it states : “The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided that the programming language and data file formats used in a program to interpret and execute application programs and to read and write data in a specific format of data files were elements that enabled users to exploit certain functions of the program. As such they were not protected by copyright under the Computer Programs Directive.”
So, the format of a data file is NOT copyrighted (in the EU!), and you can use the original program in a legal way to create data file content, which you can then reverse engineer.
Here I might point out that there is no apparent ‘victim’; noone clinging on to their work, property or IP, alike. Copyrights and patents will time lapse and even inventors will feel like they had their fill. This is nearly a clear-cut Clear-conscience scenario.