Clean room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights and trade secrets associated with the original design. In business a Chinese Wall or firewall is an information barrier implemented within a firm to separate and isolate persons who make investment decisions from persons Reverse engineering (RE is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device object or system through analysis of its structure function and operation Copyright is a legal concept enacted by Governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship Exclusive rights to control its distribution usually for A trade secret is a Formula, practice, Process, Design, instrument, Pattern, or compilation of Information which Clean room design is useful as a defense against copyright and trade secret infringement because it relies on independent invention. However, because independent invention is not a defense against patents, clean room designs typically cannot be used to circumvent patent restrictions. A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an

The term implies that the design team works in an environment that is 'clean', or demonstrably uncontaminated by any knowledge of the proprietary techniques used by the competitor.

Typically, a clean room design is done by having someone examine the system to be reimplemented and having this person write a specification. This specification is then reviewed by a lawyer to ensure that no copyrighted material is included. The specification is then implemented by a team with no connection to the original examiners.

Examples

A famous example is that of Columbia Data Products who built the first clone of an IBM computer through a clean room implementation of its BIOS. Columbia Data Products (CDP introduced the MPC 1600 "Multi Personal Computer" in June 1982 IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. In Computing, the BIOS (ˈbaɪoʊs Another is VTech's successful clones of the Apple II ROMs for the Laser 128, the only computer model, among dozens of Apple II compatibles, which survived litigation brought by Apple Computer. VTech is the common name of Video Technology Ltd (,, a Hong Kong -based manufacturer of Consumer electronics. The Laser 128 was a clone of the Apple II series of Personal computers, first released by VTech in 1984. In law a lawsuit is a civil action brought before a Court in which the party commencing the action the Plaintiff, seeks a legal or equitable remedy Apple Inc, ( formerly Apple Computer Inc, is an American Multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing Consumer electronics ReactOS is an open source operating system made from clean room reverse engineered components of Windows. ReactOS is a computer Operating system intended to be binary-compatible with Application software and Device drivers made for Microsoft Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft.

Case law

Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation was a 1999 lawsuit which established an important precedent in regard to reverse engineering. In Common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a Legal case establishing a principle or rule that a Court or other judicial Sony sought damages for copyright infringement over Connectix's Virtual Game Station emulator, alleging that its proprietary BIOS code had been copied into Connectix's product without permission. is a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's largest Media conglomerates with 'Copyright infringement' (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by Copyright law in a manner that violates Connectix Corporation was a software and hardware company noted for having released innovative products that were either made obsolete as Apple Computer incorporated the ideas The Virtual Game Station (VGS was an Emulator by Connectix that allows Sony PlayStation Sony won the initial judgment, but the ruling was overturned on appeal. Sony eventually purchased the rights to Virtual Game Station to prevent its further sale and development. This established a precedent addressing the legal implications of commercial reverse engineering efforts.

During production, Connectix unsuccessfully attempted a Chinese wall approach to reverse engineer the BIOS, so its engineers disassembled the object code directly. In business a Chinese Wall or firewall is an information barrier implemented within a firm to separate and isolate persons who make investment decisions from persons Reverse engineering (RE is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device object or system through analysis of its structure function and operation A disassembler is a Computer program that translates Machine language into Assembly language —the inverse operation to that of an assembler. In Computer science, object code, or an object file, is the representation of code that a Compiler or Assembler generates by processing Connectix's successful appeal maintained that the direct disassembly and observation of proprietary code was necessary because there was no other way to determine its behavior. From the ruling:

Some works are closer to the core of intended copyright protection than others. Sony's BIOS lay at a distance from the core because it contains unprotected aspects that cannot be examined without copying. The court of appeal therefore accorded it a lower degree of protection than more traditional literary works.

References

• Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp., 203 F. 3d 596 (9th Cir. 2000). Accessed online on August 29, 2006.
• Computerworld article on clean room design

See also

• Chinese wall
• Code morphing