protecting circuit design

[Robert Baer]

Many potential copycats won't notice your business or think it is not
important. I guess for example Boeing could very well copy a guitar
effect pedal if they wanted. But they don't have the distribution
channels, and for them doing something probably has a lot of fixed overhead.

Now take a look at your product. Why would people buy it? Take care of
those aspects.

Is it some special feature or effect quality? Then hide it under epoxy,
grind markings of chips, mount ICs mirror-wise, whatever you can think of.

But it may be very well that your product is so great because it has
been used by band such-and-so. That is a feature that is not so easy to
copy: essentially the purchaser buys peace of mind - he know's what he's
getting. And if your price is not far out of the realm of the
competition (may not be hard - you were there first and will have better
economy of scale) they will buy yours.

Now I'd worry if my invention was a brilliant one that is easy to copy,
and there is a competitor with good name and good distribution channels,
and good economies of scale in manufacturing. That one could copy your
features. In which cas eyou can try to create either situation above. Or
patent - which is useless against a much larger opponent, I'd think.

Thomas

Patents give legal protection, up to the point that you spent your
last million dollars in the 15 year of continuous litigation.
In other words, they are great in theory, but if is contested, or
BigStore files an illegal patent and produces mirror clone - then it is
BIG BUX time....and BigStore has 1,000 to 10^6 times as much money to
$pend in court.

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Be careful not to infer that being first guarantees success.

I never assume the converse of any result is true until proved.

Ask Digital Convergence how they did with their CueCat.
And Circuit City with a new DVD format.

First is good in at least two cases:
1) Get in, Skim the early adopters, Get out!
Someone made a fortune on pet rocks, IF they got out.
Not a good idea to spend a lot of money on infrastructure
for a non-sustainable product.

The Pet Rock is no basis for an argument. We're discussing
"conventional" mainstream products

2) You have a sustainable product roadmap, marketing smarts,
manufacturing smarts, oh a market, and friends with deep pockets. Be
first, stay best, get BIG quick.

For the other 99.999% of us without deep pockets,
a disribution
channel, a sustainable product roadmap, or the sense
to get out while it's hot, being first is over rated.
mike

Your wrong. First is still absolutely number 1. Obviously its not
everything, but it is well recognised how important it is. Show me one
manager who isn't concerned fundamentally with schedule, I still have
the whip marks on my back

To all intents and purposes, all practical commercial product
development has as it heart the schedule. This is in recognition of how
important it is to get the product out there. Once a brand name gets
associated with a particular product, its just about impossible to
change that association to another brand. e.g. Coke, Kellogg's, A1
source, McDonalds, Kleenex, this list is endless.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Tony Roe]

Firstly - I endorse all the posts on this thread - it does indeed come down to
just doing it first and doing it better.

But the smarts in a device these days are generally in the innovative software,
which can involve thousands of hours of work, and Maxim / Dallas now make a big
thing about the ease with which someone can lift the lid on a 1-chip micro,
erase the lock flags and read out the embedded EPROM or flash software (it's an
argument for their battery-backed RAM technology, with auto-erase on tampering).
And I had previously thought that my code was relatively safe after I locked it
up!!

I recall a dongle many years ago for some software which I think was for
board maker. They had used a number of wires which were loop in such a way
that they touched the lid. The put what looked like potting compound on the
lid such that when you prised it apart you ripped the wires from the PCB.

Another technique used to stop the re-use of software was putting the
program in a battery backed memory. Naturally if you should loose the power
to the SRAM you lost the prog as well.

If there is any digital stuff - put it in a CPLD.

Don't know if this will help.

Regards,
Tony (remove "_" from email address to reply)

 

[Gary Tait]

Ask Digital Convergence how they did with their CueCat.
And Circuit City with a new DVD format.

Those companies faild, not because someone stole their work (the
product), but becuase of a backlash against of their business model
or concept.

 

[Don]

Sometimes an article doesn't reach an individuals news server in the same
order it reachs your server. Sometimes an article is received way later.

 

[mike]

I never assume the converse of any result is true until proved.




The Pet Rock is no basis for an argument. We're discussing
"conventional" mainstream products




Your wrong. First is still absolutely number 1. Obviously its not
everything, but it is well recognised how important it is. Show me one
manager who isn't concerned fundamentally with schedule, I still have
the whip marks on my back

I think we're in heated agreement. If you have the muscle (engineering,
marketing, sales, manufacturing, finance) to take
advantage of being first, then being and staying number one is critical.

But that's not the scenario here. We're talking about a simple
product with no barriers to entry higher than sanding the numbers
off the ICs.

If you're making a simple product and your business savvy amounts
to asking how to do it in an internet newsgroup and you don't have any
of the above-mentioned muscle and you dribble it out in production lots of
50 and sell them on the internet, all you're doing is
feasibility work for the big guys. They (being number 2) will
absolutely take your market away from you with their first batch
of 100,000 units through their 5000 distributors. Make a coffee cup
with "I was first" on it so you'll have something to remember it by.

If you watch your expenses, you might just make a tidy profit off those
first few batches, but you ain't gonna get big and still stay under the
radar of the guys who are already big. And those big guys probably
already have several product lines supporting a marketing and sales
infrastructure that you don't have.

Perhaps I need to state my assumption that a market actually exists
and being number one is synonymous with being BIG.

The only way I know to make a successful jump to big time is to shoot
the whole wad with investors and big bux. You can probably point to
many more failures than successes when trying this. Most directly
related to poor market research and an inflated assesment of the market
potential. And a belief that being first will make everything OK.

mike

To all intents and purposes, all practical commercial product
development has as it heart the schedule. This is in recognition of how
important it is to get the product out there. Once a brand name gets
associated with a particular product, its just about impossible to
change that association to another brand. e.g. Coke, Kellogg's, A1
source, McDonalds, Kleenex, this list is endless.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

--
Bunch of stuff For Sale and Wanted at the link below.
laptops and parts Test Equipment
4in/400Wout ham linear amp.
Honda CB-125S
400cc Dirt Bike 2003 miles $550
Police Scanner, Color LCD overhead projector
Tek 2465 $800, ham radio, 30pS pulser
Tektronix Concept Books, spot welding head...
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/4710/

 

[Kevin Aylward]

I think we're in heated agreement. If you have the muscle
(engineering, marketing, sales, manufacturing, finance) to take
advantage of being first, then being and staying number one is
critical.

But that's not the scenario here. We're talking about a simple
product with no barriers to entry higher than sanding the numbers
off the ICs.

If you're making a simple product and your business savvy amounts
to asking how to do it in an internet newsgroup and you don't have any
of the above-mentioned muscle and you dribble it out in production
lots of 50 and sell them on the internet, all you're doing is
feasibility work for the big guys. They (being number 2) will
absolutely take your market away from you with their first batch
of 100,000 units through their 5000 distributors. Make a coffee cup
with "I was first" on it so you'll have something to remember it by.

I don't think it really works like that in practice. The big guys are
often/usually too far removed from reality to keep tabs on the small
players untill the small players get way above the noise floor. Then the
big guys simply buy the small guys out.

If you watch your expenses, you might just make a tidy profit off
those first few batches, but you ain't gonna get big and still stay
under the radar of the guys who are already big. And those big guys
probably already have several product lines supporting a marketing
and sales infrastructure that you don't have.

As I noted above, you have to be pretty reasonable sized for the bigger
guys to notice at all, imo. What they really care about is are you
significantly impacting their existing sales. This was something I truly
saw coming when Orcad bought out Microsim/PSpice.

Small guys often go the bigger guys right from day one, they usually
don't care. Big guys only care about big markets, not potentially big
markets, in practise. That is, they are usually not on he ball enough to
know if the smaller product can make the big time. They want proof. It
the classic, only those that can prove that they don't need a loan, get
a loan.

Perhaps I need to state my assumption that a market actually exists
and being number one is synonymous with being BIG.

The only way I know to make a successful jump to big time is to shoot
the whole wad with investors and big bux.

The only guaranteed way to make a small fortune, is to start with a
large one, and lose some of it.

You can probably point to
many more failures than successes when trying this.

To my knowledge, the accepted success rate is 10%.

Most directly

related to poor market research and an inflated assessment of the
market potential.

I don't agree. People always like to blame something/someone for
failure. I don't think that anything has to be wrong at all to fail. Its
the norm. The key ingredient to any and all success is luck. The real
world is far to complicated to be able to make predictions of success.
Its all hindsight. As McNally says, the only valid marketing survey, is
a signed purchase order.

And a belief that being first will make everything
OK.

This is on a par to those daft wallys that think they will make it as a
pop star if they really believe in themselves and give it full
commitment, partly because of those bigger idiots who have happened to
made it, and believe that's what got them there. The reality is that
there are far too few slots for the available coins.

The market, whatever it is, cannot absorb all ofv the new products.
Everything can be exactly right, but still fail. The pop star case
illustrates this well. Maybe out of the 1000000 hopefuls, 10% of them
have the basics. The next 10% of them, have some more, looks, ability,
etc... the next 10%. say 1000 of them, are all brilliant,
handsome/beautiful, great voice, charisma, play 3 instruments, live next
door to Simon Cowell, etc, etc but guess what, there only room for 10
this year.

Its a very ingrained view in most that if you don't get success, then
there must have been something wrong done. That there is something
lacking. The statistics just don't support this view. Given essentially,
the same conditions, the inherent uncertainty or randomness of the
system, will result in different outcomes. You can build a door, and
keep it open, but if the wind don't blow, the rose wont float through
it.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Tony Roe]

Just remembered some other methods used for potted circuitry at places I have
worked, to slow down a would-be copier:

Have a surplus of old useless chips (don't we all?)? use them to fill up any
spare real estate on the new design.

More seriously, if using an old micro with separate memory, switch a low-order
address line under the EPROM where it's not obvious - they can remove the EPROM,
extract the code and disassemble it, but it will be junk.

Many potential copycats won't notice your business or think it is not
important. I guess for example Boeing could very well copy a guitar
effect pedal if they wanted. But they don't have the distribution
channels, and for them doing something probably has a lot of fixed overhead.

Now take a look at your product. Why would people buy it? Take care of
those aspects.

Is it some special feature or effect quality? Then hide it under epoxy,
grind markings of chips, mount ICs mirror-wise, whatever you can think of.

But it may be very well that your product is so great because it has
been used by band such-and-so. That is a feature that is not so easy to
copy: essentially the purchaser buys peace of mind - he know's what he's
getting. And if your price is not far out of the realm of the
competition (may not be hard - you were there first and will have better
economy of scale) they will buy yours.

Now I'd worry if my invention was a brilliant one that is easy to copy,
and there is a competitor with good name and good distribution channels,
and good economies of scale in manufacturing. That one could copy your
features. In which cas eyou can try to create either situation above. Or
patent - which is useless against a much larger opponent, I'd think.


Thomas

Regards,
Tony (remove "_" from email address to reply)

 

[Keith R. Williams]

I have designed a simple circuitry to resolve a problem. I want to
mass produce it as a product for sale. However, I do not want to
produce it on an unprotected PCB board for fear of being copied. I
would like to hear your opinion about what might be the solution.
Thanks!

Some of the Xilinx Virtex series FPGAs have a 3-DES encryption option
for the configuration data. You enter the key into a battery-backed up
key area in the FPGA and then encrypt the configuration ROM with that
key. This should slow down the competition. You have to supply a
button cell to power the FPGA's key memory when power is off, but
TANSTAAFL.

 

[Gary Tait]

Whereas On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:50:24 +0100, "Fred"

Another technique used to stop the re-use of software was putting the
program in a battery backed memory. Naturally if you should loose the power
to the SRAM you lost the prog as well.

Or storing essential data in SRAM memory, even having data the program
needs to run, that realing aren't related to what the code does. The
downside is though, if/when the battery goes flat, the device becomes
a paperweight/doorstop/boatanchor, unless you are prpared to revive
dead machines.

 

[Gary Tait]

Whereas On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 22:15:01 +1000, Tony Roe

Just remembered some other methods used for potted circuitry at places I have
worked, to slow down a would-be copier:

Have a surplus of old useless chips (don't we all?)? use them to fill up any
spare real estate on the new design.

More seriously, if using an old micro with separate memory, switch a low-order
address line under the EPROM where it's not obvious - they can remove the EPROM,
extract the code and disassemble it, but it will be junk.

Won't stop them from just copying the rom.

 

[Active8]

I am a relative newcomer to this group but I have to wonder whether
people who respond to a post even bother to read the previous responses
before putting their 2 cents in.

the severity of the offense varies

I see an awful lot of duplicity in
responses. Also I think it is extremly rude of the original poster not
to acknowledge the responses to their post.

me too, but sometimes you have to thank them all in one post rather than
bowing and scraping and posting 100 thank yous. youse... y'all... heh,
heh, heh.

brs,
mike

 

[Active8]

I am a relative newcomer to this group but I have to wonder whether
people who respond to a post even bother to read the previous responses
before putting their 2 cents in. I see an awful lot of duplicity in
responses. Also I think it is extremly rude of the original poster not
to acknowledge the responses to their post.
Just my thoughts at the moment.
Frank

BTW, i haven't seen any glaring duplicates in this thread. whatchoo
talkin' 'bout?

mike

 

[Active8]

Patents give legal protection, up to the point that you spent your
last million dollars in the 15 year of continuous litigation.

12 Million according to Don Lancaster.

 

[Active8]

I see an awful lot of duplicity in


While we are on hates, "Top posting"

Duplicate answers actually are one of the useful things in some respects
because there is a good chance that the answer is correct if people
unrelated to each other suggest the same or similar solutions

"top posting" as in snipping out the quotes, right? it has its uses if
one is just replying to a single point in a long confusing continuation.

i just reply to whichever poster i intend to be addressing.

and you're right about dupes. i'd rather let the OP know that I agree
with another's suggestions, but it can also be done by just replying to
the suggestion with a simple "yup" and add to it if i feel it would
help. depends, i guess you have to use your best judgement. do i have
time to read *all* the posts? i try to scan at least a few before i
reply.

I never know whether to acknowledge posts following a request, I suppose
it's courtesy to do so but serves no real purpose. Surely if a solution is
not adequate then the poster will re-phrase and re-ask the question.

If you respond to a proposed solution how many times do you do it, do you
respond to the solutions you have decided to ignore?

if you tell an OP to drop 10V across a 1 ohm, 1 watt resistor, i'll jump
in. if i just don't like your idea but there seems to be nothing
inherently wrong with it, no.

Courtesy and humour do not travel well in newsgroups,

language barriers can be a prob. twice (thrice?) i've had Helmut take me
wrong. his english appears ok and because of that, i forget (not any
more) he doesn't understand our (and especially my) sense of humor.
friendly jibes... innocent comments meant to be humorous. all you can do
is apologize.

I have posted what I
considered to be humourous comments only to cringe when I read them back
(normally after posting when it is too late), why do they read OK before you
hit the send button?

i hate it when that happens. then there's the change of heart or, "maybe
i shouldn't have reamed him so hard." if you're quick, you can cancel
the post before google archives it.

I personally think it is better to stick to asking and
answering, that way people don't get upset through misunderstanding. but
each to his own and without the occasional slagging match or humourous
comment I suppose it could get boring.

it would and does. eh, groups like this... there's *usually* enough
potentially interesting stuff for the group group to stay afloat, but i
also like the humor and some of the OT.

unfortunately, we're in the middle of a spam attack and there's a lot of
OT thread activity pertaining to that. it's getting old, but some good
info has surfaced.

brs,
mike

 

[BretCahill]

Only patent stuff that can only be
fabricated and marketed by an infringer
worth suing, one that:

1. has a lot of infrastructure, and,

2. makes a lot of money off your product


Bret Cahill

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Whereas On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 22:15:01 +1000, Tony Roe


Won't stop them from just copying the rom.

If the data or address lines are swapped, the stored data is useless
in a standard configuration. It will only stop a rank amateur from
copying a design, but in one case, a product was cloned, and the clone
swapped the data and address lines around so the firmware was not an
exact copy. It was a clone of the old Commodore 1541 disk drive, and the
case was thrown out of court because the ROM images not only didn't
match, but the code in the Clone ROM was unreadable.

 

[JeffM]

3. Have a lawyer on retainer OR have a lawyer as a partner.

A patent is only a right to sue.

 

[JeffM]

Copyright does not apply.
A patent might, but the idea can't be obvious.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Thanks for the information. I didn't know that this was a possibility.
Frank

You are welcome.