The Art of Reverse Engineering
Recently a client asked me for advice on setting up a reverse engineering project. The company had just hired a senior engineer from a competitor that had pulled ahead of them the year before with the release of a next generation product. They needed to respond soon. The new employee was “clean,” they assured me, having come over without any documents or files. So they proposed to get him going with a small technical team and some samples of the competitor’s product. He no longer had access to any trade secrets of his former employer; what could possibly go wrong?
In the world of trade secrets, reverse engineering is universally embraced as acceptable. It involves starting with a publicly available product or set of information (service) and taking it apart to discover how it was created. Why does anyone do this? To discover, legitimately, a path already taken:
- to learn, as when a child takes apart a clock
- to change or repair a product/service
- to provide a related service/service
- to create a compatible product/service
- to create a competitive product/service
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Knowledge
Repository
Khaitan & Co
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