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This chapter discusses the experience of Japan, whose catch‐up efforts started after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 that established the modern central government. It also had the second catch‐up period after the defeat in World War II. Its patent and other intellectual property laws were enacted during 1884–8. The laws have been modified several times to accommodate increasing applications and changing needs. Japan imported numerous technologies from abroad through licensing, joint ventures, capital participation by foreign firms, and reverse‐engineering. The presence of IPR probably facilitated technology importation and gave incentives for domestic firms to invest in improving imported technology and commercializing it. Yet, there are also cases in which IPR created cost disadvantages or barriers for Japanese firms, such as those of nylon and semiconductors. It is therefore extremely difficult to argue whether IPR helped or deterred Japan's catch‐up.

This chapter focuses on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prevents the circumvention of technological measures controlling access to copyrighted works. It begins by tracing the role that reverse engineering has played in the software industry as a matter of technology and law. It then introduces the DMCA's text and legislative history. It explores the most important cases that have applied the statute to competition-related issues, and examines the review process that the Copyright Office has conducted in granting new exemptions from liability. The chapter concludes with a proposal that seeks to remedy the anticompetitive use of the DMCA. Just to pick one example, such a proposal could reduce the price of ink in printer toner cartridges.

This chapter retrospectively examines three specific cases of design enabler development in the Automation in Design Group at Clemson University. In defining design enablers as tools that are found throughout the design process, both computational and non-automated, that enable designers to achieve product solutions, this chapter sets the stage for comparing two main drivers for enabler genesis. The three design enablers that are studied are as follows: design exemplar-based solid model retrieval system, a requirements modeling and concept exploration tool, and connectivity graphs derived from reverse engineering needs. Two different approaches for tool development are explored: demand driven and internally pushed. This chapter highlights the differences between the development of these tools and how this impacts their validation, implementation, and assimilation. Specifically, the focus of this chapter is to provide a foundation that is more structured and systematic for other design researchers while meeting the needs and requirements of industry end-users of the design enablers.

This chapter examines the interoperability debate in the European Union and the U.S. before 1995. It considers the issues concerning the unprotectability of interface specifications and the permissibility of reverse engineering for computer software. It reviews several relevant cases including Whelan v. Jaslow, Computer Associates v. Altai, and Atari v. Nintendo and Sega v. Accolade. It argues that the triumph of interoperability will benefit both the information technology industry and computer users around the world.

This chapter examines the enforceability of contractual restrictions on reverse engineering and considers the treatment of this issue in the context of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) in the U.S. It analyzes court decisions on court cases related to preemption and the enforceability of shrinkwrap licenses including Bowers v. Baystate Technologies and Davidson v. Jung. The analysis suggests that both the Constitution and the Copyright Act preempt enforcement of contractual restrictions on reverse engineering and that such terms in shrinkwrap licenses may not be enforceable under state contract law if users do not manifest their assent to the terms.

This chapter examines reverse engineering and the decompilation of computer programs, both of which are highly regulated under the current copyright regime. It begins with a practical overview of reverse engineering and decompilation of software, focusing on types of reverse engineering prevalent in the software industry, the various stages of reverse engineering, and the motivation and methods for reverse engineering. It then looks at the reasons for and benefits of decompilation, which is a category of reverse engineering, and examines software interoperability. At this stage the chapter considers what EU and US copyright laws say about decompilation, with particular emphasis on the role that the idea-expression dichotomy plays in decompilation scenarios. It also discusses the problem of entitlement with respect to intellectual property rules, and more specifically in the case of decompilation of computer programs. It provides a critical evaluation of Article 6 of the Software Directive in enabling decompilation in order to achieve interoperability. The chapter concludes with a commentary on reverse engineering in the cloud environment under copyright law.

This chapter examines the trade secrets regimes in the European Union and the United States, with particular emphasis on how they affect the software industry. Almost every intellectual property right originates in a secret. For example, an inventor keeps his inventive concept secret until he files for a patent. The same may apply to a designer in relation to a new product design until a registered design application or a design patent application is filed. These early stages of conception often require protection against misappropriation. The chapter considers the legal basis for granting trade secrets protection and the relevant conditions for such protection. Next, it discusses the EU and the US legal frameworks governing the misappropriation of trade secrets in relation to software products, with particular emphasis on the treatment of reverse engineering under trade secrets law.

This chapter highlights the methodologies and challenges in the reverse engineering of cellular networks, in particular the identification of network dynamics using engineering approaches. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 11.2 gives a motivating example, which highlights some of the difficulties in a cellular network inference problem. Section 11.3 discusses the different issues and methodologies in reverse engineering with respect to both topology and dynamics. Tutorials are presented in the form of case studies involving a metabolic network in E. coli and a signal transduction pathway in a caspase-activated apoptosis. Finally, open research problems in this area are identified based on the analysis of the case studies.

This chapter examines the legislative history of the interoperability exception in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the interoperability cases decided under the DMCA in the U.S. It explains the provisions of Section 1201 of DMCA and the reverse engineering exception in Section 1201(f) that relates to interoperability. It suggests that the court decision on Chamberlain v. Skylink was a major development in DMCA jurisprudence because it prevented the DMCA from being employed to prevent legitimate competition in aftermarkets by requiring a nexus between the circumvention of access controls and infringement.

Engineers commonly disassemble a device to learn how it works. For example, Soviet engineers disassembled an American bomber to copy improvements in design. This process of “reverse engineering” depends upon a comprehensive knowledge of the principles governing design. For instance, engineers know “complicate but do not duplicate”. That is, design a separate component for each function and thereby optimize each component for the task. Neuroscientists engage in a similar process, reverse engineering the brain, and to further this endeavour we set out to demonstrate some principles of neural design. The brain’s “designer” is understood to be evolution by natural selection.

Computational modeling in psychiatry has generally followed from efforts to understand cognitive processes (McClelland and Rumelhart 1986) or the nervous system (Hodgkin and Huxley 1952). This stands to reason: psychiatric disorders are disorders of thought and central nervous system activity. This chapter argues that the computational science of collapse, which describes the manner and likelihood of failures in complex systems, provides a framework in which to use computational modeling for relating mechanisms to behavioral outcomes. This science, known as reliability engineering, is a branch of applied probability theory that has now been used for almost a century to help understand and predict how inorganic, complex systems break down. The idea of a fault tree analysis is introduced, a tool developed in reliability engineering which may be able to incorporate and provide a broader structure for more traditional computational models. Finally, some of the current challenges of psychiatric classification are unpacked, and discussion follows on how this framework might be adapted to provide a unifying framework for classification and etiology.

Chapter Six is a critical examination of the aims, claims and methods of evolutionary psychology as articulated by its major proponents, John Tooby, Leda Cosmides and Steven Pinker. The chapter indicates the loose, shifting or incoherent notion of “mind” in the field's central formulations, the dubiousness of its key assumptions about mind/brain modularity and both the genetically transmitted character and universality of various human traits, the theoretical circularity involved in its defining method of “reverse engineering,” its arbitrarily limited, strictly mentalistic view of human culture--and, especially, of the dynamics of cultural transmission--and, finally, its historically distorted and otherwise tendentious account of its own intellectual-scientific status and achievements compared to those of alternative and rival accounts of human behavior, culture and cognition, both earlier and current.

This chapter explains why justice requires rationing in health care, arguing that justice not only permits but in principle requires a national health scheme to deny some people some effective medical treatment they need. The basic moral structure of a national health care system is defined by its answers to two questions: whom to treat and which medical services to offer (to those whom the system treats). At first glance, the most compelling answers to these questions are the simplest ones, namely, “everyone” and “everything.” Or, a little more precisely, “everyone, without regard to her ability to pay” and “every effective medical service that a sick person needs.” This chapter contends that the second answer is actually mistaken. Not only does morality— or, more specifically, justice—permit a national health care system to deny some sick people some effective medical services that they need, but it positively requires as much. The chapter also compares the “rationing” approach to what it calls the “reverse-engineered” approach and describes premises that are required to reach the conclusion that justice requires health care rationing.

This chapter examines whether contract law may be used to override or redefine the exceptions and limitations in existing copyright laws with regard to software licences. It shows that right holders favour licensing over sales and use the licensing model to regulate the ability of licensees to utilize functional elements of the software and reverse engineer it. The chapter also explains how the software industry uses technology-based solutions to restrict reverse engineering and reproduction. The principle of the freedom of contract is examined, and the legal principles that may limit its application are surveyed. Next, the combined effect of contracts of adhesion and technological protection measures on the use of software and software products are examined. Finally, software’s unique specificities as a protectable subject matter, as a ground for a balanced juridical approach in relation to the combined effect of copyright law, contract law, and anti-circumvention provisions, are discussed.

This chapter combines all ‘by-product’ topics that are worth discussing. First, it is argued that complex projects should be adaptive systems. Decentralized short-term flexible planning is encouraged as opposed to centralized detailed scheduling with a primary purpose—to avoid work constraints. Second, a concept of a single failure mode is developed. It is demonstrated that the single failure mode is represented by a two-peak (bi-modal) probabilistic distribution due to existence of a distinctively sensitive risk. Third, a two-well model is drawn from quantum physics to explain a mechanism of the single-mode realization. Fourth, using project system dynamics lessons learned, practical recommendations on organization of project quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are put forward. Fifth, the origin and nature of general uncertainties and internal risk amplifications are uncovered. Sixth, ‘a reverse engineering’ approach to handle risk addressing is contemplated along with a possibility to use stretched targets.

This chapter examines the relationship of corporate tax privacy and tax compliance from a new vantage point, which is called the “intercorporate perspective.” In the United States, all tax returns and return information of corporations are confidential. An unappreciated value of corporate tax privacy is that it can limit the pressure to pursue aggressive tax planning and reporting that corporate tax directors often face from significant shareholders, nontax managers, and even themselves. Corporate tax privacy provides the government with valuable strategic defenses by restraining the ability of a corporation’s stakeholders and agents to engage in “benchmarking” and “reverse engineering,” behaviors that would likely cause some tax directors to pursue more aggressive tax planning and reporting. Yet, at the same time, increased public access to certain corporate tax return information could enable the public to participate in informed debate and discussion of the corporate tax law and to question whether the governments is applying the tax law to corporate taxpayers effectively and fairly.

Superorganisms are reverse-engineered by natural selection. The totality of the organizational structure of a colony, its colony-level phenotype, is exposed to natural selection. Those colonies with phenotypes that are best adapted to their environment survive best and reproduce the most reproductive offspring. The heritable features of those colony phenotypes increase in frequency in the next generation, and the population evolves a social organization. Natural selection doesn’t “see,” doesn’t act on, the individual components of organization, only the gross product. Therefore, the intricacies of the design, such as reduced fertility of workers, nest design and maintenance, and defensive behavior, are reverse-engineered. They evolve as a consequence of their effects on the whole colony.