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. 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. The Cleanroom Software Engineering process is a software development process intended to produce software with a certifiable level of reliability. ... In business, Chinese Walls are information barriers implemented within firms to seperate and isolate persons who make investment decisions from persons who are privy to undisclosed material information which may influence those decisions. ... Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of taking something (a device, an electrical component, a software program, etc. ... Copyright symbol Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. ... A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information used by a business to obtain an advantage over competitors within the same industry or profession. ... A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a patentee (the inventor or assignee) for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which...

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. 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. June 1982: Columbia Data Products introduced the MPC - Multi Personal Computer. ... The Columbia MPC was one of the many IBM PC compatibles that flooded the US market. ... BIOS, in computing, stands for Basic Input/Output System also incorrectly known as Basic Integrated Operating System. ... Video Technology Ltd. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ... Look up ROM in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Laser 128 was a clone of the Apple IIc, first released by VTech in 1984. ... A lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court in order to recover a right, obtain damages for an injury, obtain an injunction to prevent an injury, or obtain a declaratory judgment to prevent future legal disputes. ... Apple Inc. ...

Another example of this technique is for designing the structure and operation of companies which have agreed to merge. In April 2005, SBC Communications and AT&T announced that independent business consultants were using clean room design techniques to develop recommendations for the structure and operations of their upcoming newly merged company. The work was kept secret until the companies closed on the merger deal; thereafter the results were presented to upper management. This approach allowed the companies to adhere to business laws (specifically antitrust legislation) while they were still competitors, but gave the newly merged company a head start in its structure and operations, when all legal rules have been satisfied for the merger. SBC Communications NYSE: SBC is an American telecommunications company based in San Antonio, Texas. ... This article describes the present AT&T Inc. ... Antitrust laws, or competition laws, are laws which prohibit anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. ...

Case law

Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation was a 1999 lawsuit which established an important precedent in regard to reverse engineering. 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. 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. In law, a precedent or authority is a legal case establishing a principle or rule which a court may need to adopt when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is protected by intellectual property rights law particularly the copyright in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owners exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make... Connectix Corporation was a software and hardware company, noted for having released innovative products that were either made obsolete as Apple incorporated the ideas into system software, or were sold to other companies once they become popular. ... The Virtual Game Station (VGS) is an emulator by Connectix that allows Sony PlayStation games to be played on a computer. ...

During production, Connectix unsuccessfully attempted a Chinese wall approach to reverse engineer the BIOS, so its engineers disassembled the object code directly. 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: In business, Chinese Walls are information barriers implemented within firms to seperate and isolate persons who make investment decisions from persons who are privy to undisclosed material information which may influence those decisions. ... Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of taking something (a device, an electrical component, a software program, etc. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Disassembly. ... In computer science, object file or object code is an intermediate representation of code generated by a compiler after it processes a source code file. ...

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

• United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2000). Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.; Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation, 203 F.3d 596 (9th Cir. 2000). Accessed online on August 29, 2006. [1]
• Computerworld article on clean room design

See also

• Chinese wall#Computer science
• Code morphing