Reverse Engineering Legal Research

Reverse Engineering is a process to extract the technical secrets or other knowledge elements from the known products in fact. For developing countries like China, it is an effective way of innovation to break through bottlenecks in the enterprises'own technology with reverse engineering. Thersfore, reverse engineering can be used as a tactic in the IP strategy. However, there exists some'gray area'between reverse engineering and imitation, resulting in some uncertainties when reverse engineering is implemented by enterprises. It is provided that'the business secrets obtained through independent development and research or reverse engineering shall not be affirmed as an infringement upon business secrets prescribed in Items (1) and (2) of Article 10 of the Anti-unfair Competition Law.'in the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Some Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Civil Cases Involving Unfair Competition. Literally, the law of our country exempt the act of reverse engineering. However, how to use the technical secrets obtained through reverse engineering justly. Whether or not to restrict the post-reverse engineering activities. With the development of the semiconductor industry and software industry, the activities of reverse engineering were challenged in the USA. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the legal basis behind reverse engineering in depth to understand the rationality more clearly in case of the changing environment.In this dissertation, the author mainly uses the methods of Philosophy of Law, Law and Economics and Empirical Analysis to demonstrate the related issues of reverse engineering, especially the method of Law and Economics. The main body of the dissertation consists of the following four parts:Chapter one: Based on the limitation of business secrets right to explain the rationality of reverse engineering with the analytical method of Philosophy of Law. It is explored that reverse engineering can meet the premise of the Labor Theory of Property Right. It is also an essential requirement to distribute the knowledge product justly as well as an effective way to access to and disseminate the useful information.Chapter two: The courses of reverse engineering in Traditional Manufacturing Industries are divided into awareness stages, reverse engineering stages, implementation stages and market access stages. Then it is argued that reverse engineering can perform economic functions to prevent monopoly , promote competition as well as reduce the cost of social innovation.Chapter three: Reverse engineering in particular industries such as semiconductor, software and technical measures in the digital environment are explored. With the advancement of technology, information obtained by reverse engineering could be restricted to re-build the balance of interests between the innovator and the one who conducts reverse engineering.Chapter four: It is discussed that how should reverse engineering as one of the important policy levers of intellectual property law play its role in the context of information. Some restrictions on Post-reverse engineering may be economically sound. Policy responses are also considered in this part when the innovator thwart reverse engineering right by contract or by technical obfuscation.In general, this dissertation explore the rationality of reverse engineering from the Philosophy of Law , Law and Economics point of view. Based on the analysis on reverse engineerings in speicific industries , the author points out how reverse engineering can serve its functions as policy levers in the changing context.