Electronic – Legality of Reverse Engineering

audiolegallicensingmusicreverse-engineering

If there was a "law/legal" stack exchange site I'd post it there, but it's in its infant stages in Area 51. I'm a musician and an electrical engineering student. I've designed a modification to the pickup system of my acoustic/electric guitar that I know some people within a certain circle would be pretty interested in. I've read a lot of complaints about the stock pickup system on electronics forums, and it doesn't seem that anyone has figured out a solution, so I thought I'd make a detailed video on the work I've done. To be honest there's not too much to it, but if I post some partial schematics of the part of the original preamp I've managed to reverse engineer, can that get me into legal trouble at all? I don't plan on marketing this modification at all; I just want to share what I've done.

Best Answer

The best answer is always "talk to a lawyer." That being said, you could check out any kind of license agreement you may have implicitly agreed to when you purchased the item. Since you are not marketing this modification, the worst that could happen is that you could get a takedown request/notice for the video or a cease and desist letter. Odds are, the company either will not care or will see this as free advertising.