(basic) HOWTO make legal reverse engineering Stay Legal when doing RE ! As seen in the legal text, you should have the right to use a copy of the software/hardware to reverse engineer, (a lot of legal complaints against RE are around that) Contact the software/hardware maker (before doing RE) for getting technical information about formats, inner working, ... (keep the proof) Separate the team doing reverse engineering and documentation with the implementation team. (permit to limit the risks around "copyright" and author's right issue) Author's right/copyright is quite easy (because protection is around the expression) but patents is more difficult issue (as the description of the "process" is described), Doing circumvention of copy protection (DMCA, EUCD and alike...) is conflicting with RE exceptions,