Reverse engineering exists as long as engineering does. It has been "the means to an end" for great many purposes. In today's world of molecular doping techniques, multilayer PCBs and deep submicron semiconductor fabrication processes, the complexity of Reverse Engineering often exceeds complexities of original design.

Reverse engineering is a very broad notion. It would be useful to draw a mental picture of what reverse engineering is in essence. Engineering itself is the process of turning a specification into a product for performing to it. The most traditional method of the development of a technology is referred to as "forward engineering." In the construction of a technology, manufacturers develop products by implementing engineering concepts and abstractions. By contrast, reverse engineering begins with final product, and works backward to recreate the engineering concepts by analyzing the design of the system and the interrelationships of its components. Broadly speaking, reverse engineering is the scientific method of analyzing a technology specifically to ascertain how it was designed or how it operates.

The purposes of Reverse Engineering have also expanded dramatically. It is not simply used for the sake of stealing or copying someone else's work. Actually, reverse engineering is more about understanding the product than an attempt to produce a clone benefiting from the original code. In fact, it is worth while mentioning that the Supreme Court of US on number of occasions has stipulated that reverse engineering encourages innovation. The Reverse Engineering process has been mainstreamed by Semiconductor Chip Protection Act that specifically allows semiconductor chip designers to study layout of circuits and incorporate that knowledge into the design of new chips.

The three key reasons for Reverse Engineering today are :
-Competitive intelligence vis-à-vis competitive cost and design subtitles.
-Design solutions & fabrication methods used to achieve parametric characteristics .
-Infringement analysis to ascertain use of your intellectual property by an unlicensed party.

So how will you benefit from years of research and development that Ixento has invested into the Reverse Engineering road map and automation development and millions of dollars invested into state-of-the-art analytical equipment?
Whether you are design engineer, marketing guru or licensing professional, the information we provide will make you a more effective contributor to your company success.

Reverse Engineering for design engineers:

It does not matter how many articles and conference papers you read. The most elegant design solutions remain outside presenter's data. A quick glimpse of how other teams solve design challenges similar to yours can generate a storm of your own ideas. Besides that, Reverse Engineering can reduce overall time to market of the product you are designing and allow you to avoid inadvertent pitfalls. It can also set the plunk you are working against ,making your creation better, faster and cheaper than competitor's solution.

Reverse Engineering for marketing professionals:

First-hand information on competitors cost data,
Speedy understanding of process road-maps
Comparing cost effectiveness of design methodologies and plethora of useful competitive intelligence so necessary for the next product definition and existing product development road-map

Reverse Engineering for licensing professionals:

The way to follow is making patents a royalty producing assets through critical valuation if your patent portfolio, determining the value of IP assets, setting a licensing strategy and the right patent management. Ixento can help you to assess the competitive patent landscape and consequently to realize your licensing objectives, to evaluate your patents identifying their strengths and weaknesses in order to find those that could increase your licensing revenues and those that may no longer to be maintained, search for prior art and prior use, provide you with a due to documentation evidence of it, consider licensing opportunities to existing and/or potential users of your technology, find the most interested buyers of a technology and negotiate the best licensing agreements for you. To perform this task Ixento's patent technical experts are perfectly skilled in the technology, familiar with the marketplace and knowledgeable about patent claims.
Finally, we can deliver an undeniable infringement/non-infringement information reducing licensing negotiating time, legal costs and instances of litigation.

So why Ixento?
Even though there is a very limited number of companies specializing in reverse engineering all over the world today, Ixento stands alone apart from the rest. We had developed the most automoted tool set allowing the circuit reverse engineering of semiconductors and PCBs. This tool set reduces the time-investment by order of magnitude while increasing the accuracy of the reports by the same factor. Our international team of highly-skilled experts is distributed amongst high technology centers in Europe and Asia. This allows you, our customer, access to the most cost-effective talent available for your specific requirement. For the past four years we have been investing heavily into R&D and equipment. Sufficesto say that 30% of our current stuff is involved in R&D projects. In the past 3 months we have ordered over $1 000, 000.00 of state-of-the-art and analytical equipment to be delivered by May 2006.
While our competition has spent vast sums on telling the world how good they are we were spending similar amounts on getting better , technically. We will not boast, just show you.