Hey guys,

I've just recently reverse engineered the specs for a file format used by an application. I was hoping that I could publish the specs online as well as provide support plugins for other applications to use files of this type.

Does anyone know if this is legal in Canada/US?

in US you need 2 - stage RCE; basically you need:
1) to become attested schizophrenic, because the people that reverse CANNOT use reversing knowledge to rebuild/help building any software.
2) you must create a document and have no relation (apart $) with the ones that re-creates work.
3) (general) you must do it under the fair usage clause, which means you must prove it has been done for inter-operation purposes only. You can google for the famous SEGA vs dont remember for that.

(ensure well about 3rd point, big companies never kids about....)
Good luck....

In short, go ahead and post it. But kindly do not include your real name or address anywhere. :P

Have Phun

As is demonstrated every day right here - words are not illegal - my suggesstion would be to publish a description of your work as detailed as possible with out DIRECTLY mentioning the app - should anyone decide to use your work to develop plug-ins or other app interfaces it's not your issue - if all is done with a scholarly approach I doubt if you'll have any issues - but if any money changes hands then that changes the entire game.

SiGiNT

Adobe versus Microsoft threatened law suit over .PDF file support.

Adobe: It is mine, mine, mine!!!

Has anyone seen Stallman's talk about patents in the software industry?

http://www.ifso.ie/documents/rms-2004-05-24.html

It is quite amusing.

Sigh.
You touched one of the most silliest ideas of humanity -patents.

Even human genome falls under patents, so the fact that you PAY NOT for being born with a certain sequence of DNA is an exception -which might (and probably will) be only temporary.

For getting back to thread, I believe he wishes to make public (named) specs, that's why he needs to be careful.

Sigh. Patents.

Patents, in and of themselves, are not silly.

Rewarding true innovation by providing some limited protection for the "first one" is a good idea, just like (term limited) copyright is a good idea to protect artists (of whatever medium).

The silliness comes from a system corrupted by big business and special interest.

Microsoft trying to patent the "double click" as a user interface would be one example.

Extending copyrights for decades beyond the original creation date of the work is another, ala the RIAA and MPAA.

If you ever have a truly patentable idea - keep it to yourself and pursue it on your own - I have the dubious distinction of having one - I never got 1 red cent not even the obligatory small denomination note. In the meantime the company I worked for is selling the shit out of it. Never again

SiGiNT

Unfortunately, many times companies require that their employees 'contribute' to the company any patentable ideas they come up with "during business hours." This is not an uncommon idea for businesses connected to software development, but some, at least, share the royalities with the 'inventor.' It it rather hard to establish that the 'idea' itself was not the result of thought processes 'on company time.'

Doesn't make it feel any better when you are the one getting the short end of the stick!

Regards,

At the time I was traveling over 200Km each way and the idea was formulated during my commute, hardly on company time, but it was in response to a problem a customer had encountered - I could have very well kept it to myself, but my loyalty rested more with the customer than myself or my company - ahhh, my idealistic younger self - 7 years ago.

SiGiNT

I feel your pain!

Of course the "legalities" of the issue would usually depend on the specific language of any contract you might have had with your employer and what it might have contained on such subjects. Some companies even attempt to curtail patent rights for some period of time 'after' the employee departs from the company. Then everyone can argue about the 'reasonableness' of the restriction and such.

But we are getting far afield of the original topic of the Thread, which suggests that the Thread Starter wants to publish some, previously unpublished file format specification, which is most likely owned by some company which might undoubtedly not appreciate seeing their 'proprietary' code format, probably protected by patent and/or trademark, splashed all over the internet for anybody to play with.

The risks of such activities would probably be directly proportional to how much money such a company might be willing to spend attempting to prevent such a publication, or in the alternative, seek punishment of any individual who interferred with their potential income stream. Generally, the larger the company and the greater their resources, the more likely would be the risk of problems for anyone within the reach of their legal staff and accountable to a legal system to which might restrain or punish such activities. Obviously, there are many countries in which such publication would and could not be effectively punished.

Regards,

Last off-topic post Regarding employers - especially in the IT industry - it's very normal to have an unlimited IP clause in a contract. As has been said, these clauses cover all inventions created whilst in the employ of your company, regardless of whether it's outside work hours. The creator of PostIt notes is a classic example - he was a research scientist for 3m trying to create superglue, but instead ended up with the reusable backing stuff which he started using for bookmarks. He hasn't earned a cent for his creation.

That said, if you believe you're in a good position, it might be possible to negotiate an exemption. Previously I've had clauses added to my contracts that allow me to retain IP over my own creations as long as they are not in direct competition with the employer, and they do not use any special knowledge gained whilst working for the employer.

As for the legal side, as JMI said - if the company has the cash and they want to come after you, they will. It won't matter if they have a valid legal case because they'll work on the assumption of crushing you financially. Keep the EFF on speed-dial

JMI, I agree with your point, but there are ways to circumvent actually posting specific code, we do it here every day, one approach would be to develop a document that described a "theoretical" database format very similar to the one in question, and then discuss various ways to interface with it - if you go to CrackZ's page and read his essays on the ECC patch as applied to a program that is alluded to but not directly named - but at the sane time is obvious to someone familiar with the app, you'll see that this approach satisfied the lawyers that had originally objected to his out and out naming of the target.

SiGiNT

WOW! that was cool - FireFox crashed in the middle of me writing this and when restarted brought me right back to the point I had just written.

AFAIK reversing for interoperability is legal.