Anticircumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Reverse Engineering: Recent Legal Developments

Publication Date: December 2004

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Law and ethics; Media, telecommunications, and information

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Abstract:

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits individuals from manufacturing, selling, or trafficking in technology, products, services, or devices that circumvent technology designed to control access to a copyrighted work. This is known as the DMCA's "anticircumvention" provision. Although most commonly invoked in the context of digital piracy of music, motion pictures, and other entertainment-related media, another genre of anticircumvention-based cases is making its way through the courts. These cases involve the initiation of anticircumvention litigation for what some argue are anti-competitive purposes in the marketing and sale of durable goods.

The practice of reverse engineering allows others to identify and analyze the creative versus the functional aspects of copyrighted software and to utilize them to some degree. In some contexts, reverse engineering has been held by the courts to be a fair use of copyright-protected property. There is also an express, limited statutory exemption for reverse engineering under the DMCA. How the practice and use of reverse engineering for commercial goals relates to the relatively new protections against circumvention is of interest to many. They are concerned with the extent to which access-control technology is likely be employed to extend (or attempt to extend) a copyright holder's control over durable goods with copyrighted components and the secondary markets for such goods.

This report examines two recent decisions from U.S. Courts of Appeals, Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 387 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2004), and Chamberlain Group, Inc. v. Skylink Technologies, Inc., 381 F.3d 1178 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Both cases allege violation of the anticircumvention statute with respect to development and sale of consumer goods. In Lexmark, the defendant marketed a microchip that allowed third-party manufacturers to sell toner cartridges that worked with the plaintiff's printer. In Chamberlain, the defendant sold a universal garage door opener transmitter that worked with the plaintiff's garage door opener. In both cases, the courts found that the actions of the defendants did not violate the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA. In doing so, the courts had to reconcile closely related aspects of copyright law with the strictures of the DMCA.

This report will not be updated.