What is Reverse Engineering?

Reverse engineering is an investigation of the structure or chemical nature of existing, unknown products based on various analytical approaches. The aim of such reverse engineering studies is to document the structure of a product as precisely as possible and to obtain information about the production and process steps used. The knowledge gained through reverse engineering about a competing product can be used in a variety of ways.

Application Areas for Reverse Engineering

There are many different uses for reverse engineering in industry:

• Reverse engineering can be used to accelerate development work for the manufacture of your own products or to optimize properties compared to the competition.
• Reverse engineering is used by many companies to protect their own know-how. It is not uncommon for the infringement of a patent or utility model to be clearly demonstrated through appropriate reverse engineering studies.
• In addition, the reverse engineering of your own products can be used to check whether independently developed production or process engineering solutions could infringe existing copyrights of third parties. This approach also serves to reconstruct damage patterns that have occurred (failure analysis).

Tascon – Your Partner for Reverse Engineering

The surface analytical methods available at Tascon´s laboratory are, without exception, very suitable for dealing with reverse engineering issues. Due to the delicate importance of reverse engineering, however, we rarely find out about the precise motivation of our clients. Nevertheless, in recent years we have been able to support many customers analytically, through research or as a consulting expert with questions of reverse engineering. Examples of this can be found in all high-end technology areas. In recent years, for example, we have carried out reverse engineering studies on products from the pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors, in the areas of glass, optics and laser systems, on displays and also in the area of polymer production and processing. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.