[ale] Segue from MS threatening the community

[Brian Pitts]

On Tue, 2007-05-15 at 12:49 -0600, JK wrote:
> IATotallyNAL, but I suspect that, while this may appear to be the
> current state of affairs, it doesn't reflect legal reality.  For
> example, it's my belief based on, basically, me reading Groklaw
> a lot, that reverse engineering has always been explicitly
> *permitted* under US patent law.  IOW, if you can figure out how
> to do what a patented product does, more power to you, as long
> as you don't actually *copy* the patented product.

Also NAL, but it's my understanding that reverse engineering is
permissible to reproduce a product protected by trade secrets, but not
by patents. You don't have to reverse engineer a patented product to
figure out how to do what it does, since that's what the parent tells
you.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi#QID201

-Brian