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Comment by tbodt | Hacker News Reader

In the EU, reverse engineering is allowed, but only for the purpose of making something that interoperates with the product you're reverse engineering, and does not compete with that product.

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In the EU what WPL has done is allowed, it has gone through those courts already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute_Inc_v_World_Prog...

Notably only the way WPL produces manuals that are too similar to SAS has been upheld.

Do you have a reference for this? It would really help me settle a recent argument with a work colleague who thinks that reverse engineering a SAP HTTP API is not OK

The EU basis is Directive 2009/24. Given it is a directive, each member state has local laws implementing it, so the exact details might vary.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=143505754...

Article 5 and Article 6 are the most interesting when it comes to reverse engineering, with 5 allowing to study an application while using it legally and breaking some protected rights for bug fixes and 6 allowing decompilation for some purposes.

This case of SAS vs. World Learning first went to court in the UK and from there to the CJEU which had a few substantial clarifications. These are quoted here in Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute_Inc_v_World_Prog...

Does this help you?

It's apparently in directive 2009/24:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#European_U...

I think you'd want to know about the case law before leaning too heavily on that, though.

Your #1 way to resolve that issue is to pass it to corporate legal if you have such a department.

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