Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 科技法律研究所 === 97 === Through researching U.S Intellectual Property Law cases specially address reverse engineering in the computer software context, this essay will discuss trade secret, copyright, and patent law issues including reverse engineering computer software. There is no provision about reverse engineering in the current trade secret law. According to the U.S cases law and legal theories, if third party proceeds reverse engineering in the computer software, and the secrecy requirement should disappear with the computer software enter the market. In copyright law, when the only way to obtain the ideas and functional elements of a computer program is by disassembling the object code, and some courts in the U.S have held that this disassembly is fair use as a matter of law. Patent law does not provide a reverse engineering defense to infringement. Since trade secret, copyright, and patent law each treat reverse engineering differently, software reverse engineering may lose protection in Intellectual Property Law. On the basis of legal stability, the government should formulate a coherent treatment of software reverse engineering in Intellectual Property Law. If making the different analyses, it will affect the right of reverse engineer in the computer software.
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