Rational Use Of The Legal Issues Of Software Reverse Engineering

The Software was considered the21st century's brightest industry. The great potential which it has contributed to social wealth and society development has been proved. With the development of the Software industry about software development, sale, and use, the legal matter about it was also came into sight. The problem of Software Reverse engineering is one of that. Reverse engineering of computer software is such a kind of engineering technique that through the conducts of decompilation and disassembly so that we can transform software object program into source program. It does not only have utilitarian value, but also jurisprudence basis.This essay firstly introduces the origin, concept, and aim of Reverse Engineering of Computer Software. And then we have to find out whether the use of Software Reverse engineering is legal by discussing its legal nature in the field of law. And the decompilation and disassembly which transform object program into source program belong to conduct of software reproduction. The exclusive right under copyrights which the Software Reverse Engineering concerns is the right of reproduction. So we get the next focus of the problem: whether the act belongs to fair use.On the Statement of scholars both in developed counties and ours, the writer's attitude is agree with the fair use of Software Reverse engineering by analyzing its theory basic and judgment standard, with the method concerned the science of Legal, Economic and Computer.In the third part of the article, from the lawmaking and practice in US and EU, we can see the lawful status and fair use of reverse engineering have been set up with conditions. At present, this regarded as the great significance for us.In part four, because of the great importance of software reverse engineering, we also engineering in 2007. But the relative domestic laws which are full of defects should be perfected. We should borrow mature experience that handle reverse engineering from foreign countries, workable rules to provide an operating platform and infrastructure for the judiciary and the fair use of it to ensure the realization of the rights of public access to knowledge and information.