You should take a few minutes to evaluate the threats to your intellectual property (your code). A customer who wants to buy one and clone a handful for his own use would probably have to spend more money doing the epoxy melting thing than what it would cost to buy them from you. He might do it anyway, but it would not make good economic sense for him to do so. It'll be hard to tell if he does because he's only going to make a few units, and may not have to tell anybody else he's doing it. Code protect will probably stop him, he's probably lazy as well as dishonest. Just about anything non-trivial will do the job. On the other hand, if your code protection scheme makes your product harder to use and maintain, a competitor who doesn't bother may lose more sales to cloning, but capture the market. That's why big outfits like Microsoft don't mess with dongles and stuff. They figure that when people steal their stuff, it's still increasing their market share and decreasing their competitors sales. Someone who is cloning thousands either for his own use or for sale is ripping you off for some real money. He could afford the time and trouble to do the epoxy melting and all that. By the same token, he's ripping you off for enough to make it worth your while to hire a lawyer to sue his @ss. It'll also be easier to discover that he's doing it because if he's using thousands himself he has enough employees that one is likely to talk, and if he's selling them, he has to get the word out somehow, and if you listen, you're likely to hear. If some company in China is cloning your stuff by the millions, they can clone the whole chip. Welcome to the big time along with Microsoft, etc. Your schools of lawyersharks can at least stop them from flooding the U.S. market, but you're not likely have any more success stopping them on their home ground than Bill has. > -----Original Message----- > From: anonlistpost anonlistpost [mailto:anonlistpost@HOTMAIL.COM] > Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 9:22 AM > To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU > Subject: Re: [pic]: lousy code protection on F87X !!! Are you kidding > me? > > > Hello all, from Bill Davis. So my anonymity is blown, people > seemed to be > very insulted by my hidden name. Call me paranoid, but > always better safe > than sorry. > > My easiest path will be if I just give up the idea of safe > code. I can throw > some road blocks by code protecting certain stable blocks and > hiding code > with bank specific code protection, but the more code that is > code protected > the fewer banks that remain that can be flashed, ultimately > giving me a chip > I need to consider OTP, or do a physical recall and/or chip swap. > > Beyond that, how difficult is it for someone to, as Alan just > suggested, > remove the epoxy on the chip and erase the code protct bits > to then download > all the hex code? Sure, they've got to disasseble it and > reverse engineer > it, but can they easily get at it? Is removing the epoxy to > expose the die > a real possibility or just a very difficult to achieve > project or outright > myth? > > If one can erase the code protect, than it stands to reason > chip recalls > with 100% code protect are futile. And best to just use > flash for flash and > only try and use code protection to dissuade the ambivalent. > The determined > thief, it appears, can aways expose the die and get at your > code by erasing > the bits. Is this a real possibility? > > Shall I surrender to defeat on this and just use flash and > leave my code > naked?? > > Thanks... > ______________________________________________________________ > ___________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.