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Reverse Engineering - always possible with enough time and resource?

  • 11-02-2014 8:43am
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,539 ✭✭✭


    Hi all,

    I'm working on a project where a key issue is whether or not the product in question can be reverse engineered.

    The product is a liquid made up of a secret blend of readily available chemicals and oils which are then treated in some secret manner (mechanical/heat etc) to form the end product.

    The owner of the product maintains the secrecy of the formula and the production process (it's only made in small batches) and should something happen to him the product secret is documented and kept in a safe to be passed to his successor. He fervently maintains that it is "impossible" to reverse engineer the product so he prefers to keep it secret (a la the formula for Coca Cola) rather than publish it and protect it with intellectual property rights as he fears copycats with access to the published formula could develop products which are 99% the same and not be in breach of the copyright.

    My question, which is purely theoretical, is is it not always possible to reverse engineer any product through deformulation/Chromatography if enough time and resource is applied to the challenge? It may cost tens of millions to employ dozens of scientists and use enough labs etc but in theory is it not just a question of sophisticated trial and error until the correct formula is discovered?

    I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this and in particular any sort of credible source which confirms my assertion and ideally has some way of calculating the potential cost involved in such a reverse engineering exercise. The latter may not be possible but it would be helpful to me to know that whilst possible to do it may cost €x to achieve given the permutations involved etc.

    Ben


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,539 ✭✭✭BenEadir


    Bump ^^^^

    47 views and no thoughts whatsoever? Am I in the wrong forum?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 364 ✭✭kc90


    Is the end product a new compound or does it remain a mixture?

    The biggest issue would most likely be replicating the process, rather than identifying the reagents or raw materials. Trial and error may never get you anywhere if there's something unexpected in the manufacturing process.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,539 ✭✭✭BenEadir


    kc90 wrote: »
    Is the end product a new compound or does it remain a mixture?

    Hi KC90, the end product remains a mixture which has been "treated" in some way during the mixing process.

    I absolutely take on board what you are saying. I just need to find some articulate way of presenting that to the owner of the product in such a way that he accepts it's not "impossible" to reverse engineer the product. Extremely difficult and something which could cost millions and take years - yes, but absolutely impossible - no.

    Ben


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,156 ✭✭✭Gru


    It all completely depends on what it is you want to analyse and reverse engineer.

    I think that Coca-Cola is an example of how difficult if not impossible it is to reverse engineer something. I don't think the formula has ever been cracked and the likes of Pepsi in my opinion don't stack up against it.

    I believe you can get close given that nearly any consumer product should come with a certain amount of displayed ingredients and likely composition. However subtle additives or preparation techniques could be undetectable in some cases depending on the end product.

    There are plenty of analytical methods you could use to try and determine what something is made of but it probably would take quite a lot of work and trial and error. If it's a foodstuff I'd say it would be quite difficult to work out the exact composition.

    All in all I'd say you can get pretty close but you'd likely end up short of the real deal. You could likely spend years and never figure it out.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,779 ✭✭✭Carawaystick


    Well, for one thing, keeping a recipe secret has no timelimit, where patents and copyright have time limits


    But Zildjian were a company with about 500 years of keeping the recipe of the alloy of their cymbals secret, til it got reverse engineered in a mass spectrometer about a decade ago.

    obviously less variation possible in an alloy, than a foodstuff / enzyme effected liquid.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,539 ✭✭✭BenEadir


    Hey Carawaystick,

    Hire did that effect the sale of their drums?

    Ben


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