Re: Intellectual property (low Alfa content)

[Dennis Lou <dlou@domain.elided>]

>Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 08:38:23 -0400
>From: "Scott Johnson" <scott@domain.elided>
>Subject: Intellectual property (low Alfa content)


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>The way it works in the land of high tech (as it has been related to me)
>is this:
>
>1. You get a group of engineers that pick apart the product you wish to
>copy from company X.  Then this group of engineers writes up
>very explicit, very complete ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS for a "new"
>product.
>
>2. You then get a lawyer to interview a *new* group of engineers. The
>lawyer asks lawyerese questions along the lines of "have you ever worked
>for company X" and "have you ever seen technical specifications for
>product Y" and so on.
>
>3. These "virgin" engineers then use those very, very complete
>engineering specifications to create your product. 


In the world of chip design, this isn't actually as wasteful
as it sounds.  Most engineering groups have "systems engineers"
and "design engineers".  The systems group normally has the 
primary job function of writing specs anyway, whether reverse
engineering something or coming up with a brand new product.
The design group performs the same function whether doing
a reverse engineer or brand new product as well.  It is perfectly
normal for the two to always operate at different levels of abstraction.

However, where reverse engineering bogs things down is in the
lack of interaction between the two groups and the very linear
process that the two operate.  The design group would normally
start designing after preliminary specs have been written
and the systems group would normally get involved with testing
after the design implementation phase.  In the above steps,
you use the same engineering resources, but you interrupt the
flow with some very expensive lawyers.

>It should be noted that Eriminas (sp?) has had a monopoly on the chassis
>stiffener market (such as it is) for, as I recall, nearly ten years. At
>no point has the price been lowered. While it may not seem fair for
>someone to come along and copy what is sure to be a low-volume product
>from a cottage-industry manufacturer, the extended time that the
>designer has had a monopoly on this market has hopefully allowed them to
>amortize their development costs.

On the surface, it would seem to me that there isn't any mystics or magic
to chassis stiffening.  How difficult could it be to design a chassis
stiffener from scratch?  Loan an ME grad student a Spider for a semester
to let him study the chassis.  If he comes up with a duplicate of
an existing design, at least he'll have enough understanding of
the problem to suggest an equally effective alternate approach.
I would think a reverse engineering approach is unnecessary.

- -Dennis
ASIC Design Engineer
San Diego, CA
'85 GTV6

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