Reverse Engineering Rights

Copyright law only covers ten years for Mask Works:

I would like to reverse engineer an 84 pin ASIC developed in the late

80s for example. They are no longer available and the company that holds the design isn't interested in sharing it even though the device has long been in Public Domain.

Anyone looking for a side project that probably has no money in it? If we can reverse engineer the device than anyone else can too after all.

John :-#)#

Making a functional equivalent is legal in the USA as long as you don't violate a patent or a copyright. You can design and sell, for example, a PCB that's a drop-in for some other, but you can't use their trace layout, which is copyright artwork. Similarly, an IC mask is copyright art.

What does that ASIC do?

It is a controller for a pinball MPU. It basically replaced a pile of TTL chips.

It could be replaced with a FPGA I assume. I just don't have the time or skills to do that...

What is in the chip:

Clock divider for game - external crystal

Clock divider for Time/Date - external crystal - not essential for game operation, but nice to keep.

Reset control - has an external Supervisor 3 pin IC

Reset (timed pulses) when MPU locks up or goes off-target

ROM paging and access

RAM paging and access

Blanking (Low) for when the MPU locks up or during Reset.

IO access.

IRQs

...

Wrapped around a 6809E CPU.

Link to schematic:

Thanks,

John :-#)#

onsdag den 3. maj 2023 kl. 17.54.04 UTC+2 skrev Ricky:

as long as you have legally obtained a product you can reverse engineer it as much as you like

Reverse engineering chips is super common. There are a couple of big outfits in Canada that can take an advanced-node chip and give you a transistor-level schematic, including the device characteristics.

In the US, unless I'm much mistaken, anything that can be learned by examining a product offered for sale is ipso facto not a trade secret.

Copyright is another matter.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Sounds like a good use for a Raspberry Pi. There are lots of kids in maker spaces who would program it for you, maybe fascinated with pinball machines.

Have you noticed how many data sheet figures are obviously bad copies of the original?

Some software contracts for example contain an undertaking not to reverse engineer or decompile (not that it discourages anyone from doing it). Sometimes it is the only way to find out what is going wrong in a defective system library function once you have isolated the fault.

I wonder if such a "contract" overrules the EU laws? In the US, the third way of protecting IP is "trade secret". Is requires a signed agreement by anyone you sell to, to retain the confidentiality. I'm thinking it does not provide protection from reverse engineering.

There is little expectation of anyone reverse engineering this design, unless they suspect an infringement of IP. These products are not sold to "consumers", but rather industry and government. So I expect the "rights" are a bit different. We have a confidentiality agreement, which covers distribution of actual IP, but not the design itself.

Anyone use trade secret to protect their IP?

once you sell something and the secret can be found from examining the product it is no longer a trade secret

Unless you have the customer sign an agreement about it. They also are required to have their customers sign the same agreement. This is no different from confidential information I suppose. That is typically pushed to anyone else who the information needs to be shared with.

Lots of words. Not sure how they apply to my situation.

"Interoperability is a key principle that will help achieve the stated goal of the Act: fairness in the allocation of value across the data economy".

I don't even know what this means.

Reverse engineering is also known as intellectual theft. Whether it is legal or not is another issue - the act involves the theft of the intellect of the original designer. The ChICOMs, of course, are the masters of intellectual theft.

Are/were you on TechToolsList? Wouldn't surprise me.

Retired the ML4400 over a decade ago...it is just sitting on a shelf waiting for (whatever happens to old equipment). I've graduated to a HP1662C LA - 64 inputs should be enough to crack this ASIC using your suggestions.

Thanks! - that is more in depth planning than I had gotten to so far. It will help if I can't get a volunteer to assist...

John :-#)#

That isn't what a trade secret means in UK law. It is typically some non-obvious trick during manufacture that achieves something that could not otherwise be done but isn't worth the effort of patenting (or for some reason the senior IP gurus decided not to bother).

Weird recipes for coating the insides of Faraday collectors and making insanely high value precision resistors spring to mind where not only are there hidden trade secrets but only a handful of people on the planet know them or are able to implement them properly.

I don't think you can do much even in US law about someone determining the specification of the device and then implementing a pin compatible and possibly better product from scratch. Intel x87 vs Cyrix FasMath and Intel x86 vs NEC V30 spring to mind.

Yes, but merely by not telling them how it is done.

Chemists of old would ask their assistant to get several reagents down from the shelf take them to a small back room close the door mix up a brew and return with it. This was one of the origins of trade secret - at least some of the "ingredients" would ruin the intended product.

Only the master knew which ones until he was ready to retire (like the Coke-Cola recipe). Production in chemical plants and (computer board manufacture had house codes for chips too). ISTR A = 7400 and D = 7474

If it's sufficiently non-obvious, keeping it as a trade secret avoids some of the problems with patents. For instance, secrets don't expire in 20 years; they don't involve disclosure; and they don't limit you to what's in the claims.

Also, if it's recherche enough to be a viable trade secret, it's probably not discoverable, i.e. it's unenforceable even if you have very deep pockets.

On the other hand, if you patent it, nobody else can.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don't know how much they don't know in order to do it. I have had a few such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying in vain.

Funny how those big-ass reverse engineering houses stay alive, isn't it? ;)

e.g. TechInsights in Ottawa

I do a bunch of reverse engineering for intellectual property litigation, most of it pretty simple--things like showing that there aren't enough leads on a TV backlight LED strip for them to be sensing every LED individually, that sort of thing.

I did get to purposely blow up one of Uber's lidar test boards, though. Made an entertaining 10-decond video. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Link?

It will be more entertaining than most links here recently I'm sure!

John ;-#)#