Reverse Engineering Ethics

A key issue in ethics for today’s mechanical engineers is reverse engineering. This is the process of taking apart a product, figuring out how each mechanism works, finding improvements, and adding them to your own product. The goal of reverse engineering is to make a very similar product but with minor changes or improvements. These changes can make the product cheaper so you can compete with the previous product or expand the market to new consumers with added features.

Reverse Engineering can be very good for today’s technologically based market. It allows other companies the chance to build their own product to compete with a comparable price, quality, and design. This leads to more products on the market and more opportunities for us consumers to decide which product is best. This prevents monopolization of a product and consumers facing very high prices. A good example would be the new curved TVs. There are only a few products on the market so prices are extremely high and choices are limited. In the next few years, many of the big TV manufacturers will release their version of the curved TV and the prices will significantly drop. Companies will also release different sized models to help fit the consumer needs because not everyone wants or can afford a 70” TV. It wouldn't hurt the first company much because it can take anywhere from a few months to many years for competitors to design their product. This would give them a head start on sales and allow them to sell at fairly high prices.

When a product is in the process of being reverse engineered, they might find design flaws or safety concerns with the original. A common area for reverse engineering is in computer programming. Developers will look at another programmer’s codes and rewrite their own in a different way. They can also check the code for security issues like hidden viruses or password stealing programs. Reverse Engineering has also been widely used in the military. Countries at war will try to get a hold of the other nation’s technology and reverse engineer it. This allows them to figure out how it works and either design something to prevent it, or design a similar or better weapon to use back. If we didn't reverse engineer other countries weapons, we would find ourselves on the losing side of many wars to come.

Reverse engineering can be done without infringing on intellectual property. By slightly changing the product and adding different features, the newly engineered product will avoid copyrights and patents. This is usually done by a process called clean-room engineering. A group of engineers will take apart the product and write down key features and functions. Then the observations will be given to another group of engineers, who've never seen the product before, and they will design another one to achieve the same purpose. It is a safe way to avoid copyrights as long as the same product isn't rebuilt.

Reverse engineering is necessary for our country because it provides product variety to consumers, keeps us safe, and avoids infringing on intellectual property. Imagine if you had to drive the same type of car as everyone else, use the same phone, and wear the same brand of shoes. There would be little variation in the products, and everything would be extremely expensive for us. With reverse engineering, we the consumers can buy the best product for us with the design and style we want. This way, companies are competing for our business and not making us overpay for their product.