Technological Reverse Engineering

In the world of science, reverse engineering plays an invaluable part. It is a great procedure if documentation to an older device cannot be learned. One may need to know and understand the inner works of the device in order to develop maintenance instructions, create an improved prototype or to replace incomplete or out-dated documentation.

 A individual or firm may want to reverse engineer an object because of many reasons: curiosity; learning purposes; for creation of unlicensed parallels; military knowledge or espionage; product analysis; lost documentation; analysis of technical intelligence of a competitor or for simple learn from other people’s faults.

Reverse engineering was mainly used in the military in World War ll, when soldiers were assigned to find different arms and military gadgets from the enemy and return them to the intelligence headquarters. Then the weapons and devices were reverse engineered in order to see how they work, how the regular army could make it work for the American military and how to improve upon the enemy’s innovation.

These missions and techniques were kept until strict top secrecy. Today, companies often hire similar intelligence teams to reverse engineer their competitors’ devices and gizmos. A company can create their own version of the device, so long as they don’t duplicate any of the inner workings or software program.

Computer chips or software are often reverse organized to see how they work and how they are made for maintenance purposes. In the United States, so long as the product or device was obtained in a legal way, companies and individuals are free to reverse-engineer an artifact or process in a lawful manner, even if they are protected by trade secrets.

However, patents demand a public disclosure of an invention, so engineers are free to examine the product, without taking it apart, for patent infractions or copyright infringements.