Barr Group places consulting and testifying experts who reverse engineer software, firmware, and electronics for litigation. Our engineers take apart shipping products, read the silicon and the code inside them, and turn what they find into opinions that survive deposition and cross examination. We have done this on complex cloud and enterprise systems, on embedded software, and on the circuits and integrated circuits underneath.
The short version: reverse engineering turns a shipping product into evidence of how it actually works. Lawful on a properly purchased unit in most U.S. contexts, it holds up in court only when the methodology is documented, the chain of custody is intact, and another qualified engineer could reproduce the result.
What Reverse Engineering Can Establish
Attorneys usually come to us with a question the documents cannot answer. Reverse engineering answers it from the product itself.
- Whether an accused product practices each element of an asserted claim
- Whether one company's code, design files, or architecture appear inside another company's product
- What a device actually did in the moments before it failed, as opposed to what its manual says
- Whether a security control was implemented, bypassed, or never present
- What data a product collects, stores, or transmits, and to whom
- Whether a supplier delivered what the contract specified
The evidentiary value comes from the method, not the finding. A conclusion no one else can reproduce is an opinion. A conclusion documented well enough for the other side's expert to repeat is evidence.
When Reverse Engineering Is Permitted
This is the first question most clients ask and the one most worth getting right before any work begins. Lawfulness turns on how the unit was obtained, what licence terms attach to it, whether any technical protection measure had to be circumvented, and which jurisdiction you are in. Those distinctions decide whether your evidence is admissible or a liability.
We wrote this up in detail: reverse engineering as evidence, when it is allowed and how it holds up. It covers the permitted paths, where teams cross the line, and the documentation that makes a result stand up.
Case Types We Support
Patent Infringement
Locating a patented method inside a binary, an FPGA bitstream, or a circuit board, then mapping it to the claim language element by element. See our patent infringement experience.
Trade Secret Misappropriation
Comparing two designs or two codebases for evidence of copying, and distinguishing genuine similarity from the conventions every engineer in the field uses. See our trade secret practice.
Product Liability and Failure
Establishing what a product did and why, often alongside root cause analysis and physical testing. See our product liability experience.
Anti-Piracy and Circumvention
Examining devices built to defeat a protection scheme, and explaining to a jury what the device was designed to do.
Reverse Engineering Capabilities
Our forensic analysts support attorneys in U.S. District Courts, at the International Trade Commission, before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, in arbitration, and in state and international venues. The work includes:
- Product teardowns and identification of component semiconductors
- Analysis of electronic circuits and related design documents
- Integrated circuit code review in Verilog and VHDL
- Source code review and analysis in any language
- Disassembly of binary code and malware, including with IDA Pro
- Firmware extraction from flash, debug ports, and service interfaces
- Location of patented methods within software or electronics
- Wired and wireless network traffic capture and protocol analysis
- Forensic product testing and data and metadata recovery
- Identification of bugs and defects in software or electronics
- Safety and security audits of processes and designs
Our engineers work across the major programming languages used in complex systems, including Python, Java, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, JavaScript, and assembly, and across operating systems from Windows, macOS, and Linux to real-time operating systems and mobile platforms. Many are electrical engineers who also design printed circuit boards, which matters when a case crosses from code into hardware. For disputes that sit mainly on the hardware side, see our electronics expert witness services.
How the Work Is Documented
A reverse engineering result is only as good as the record behind it. On our engagements that record normally includes the provenance of each unit examined, photographs and serial numbers before disassembly, a written tool and version list, step by step notes sufficient for an independent engineer to repeat the work, and preserved intermediate artifacts such as extracted images and captures.
In our experience the step teams skip under deadline is the intermediate artifacts, and it is the one opposing counsel asks about first.
How to Evaluate a Reverse Engineering Expert Witness Firm
Several firms offer this work and they are not interchangeable. What we suggest asking, whoever you engage:
- Who does the actual work. Ask whether the person signing the report performed the analysis or supervised someone who did.
- Hardware and software under one roof. Firmware cases routinely cross that boundary, and handing off mid-case costs weeks.
- Testimony history. Reverse engineering findings attract Daubert attention because methodology is the whole argument.
- A documented method they will show you before you engage, not after.
- Willingness to say the evidence does not support your theory. An expert who never delivers bad news is not doing the analysis.
Case Study: Satellite TV Piracy
In its legal fight against signal pirates, DirecTV retained a team of Barr Group's computer security expert witnesses to perform electronic circuit reverse engineering and device testing on more than one hundred suspected piracy products. Barr Group experts testified that accused products were designed for satellite TV piracy in several dozen cases that went to trial.
Read what judges and juries decided >
FAQs About Reverse Engineering in Litigation
Is reverse engineering legal?
In most U.S. contexts, reverse engineering a lawfully purchased product is permitted. The complications come from licence terms, contractual restrictions, circumvention of technical protection measures, and the jurisdiction involved. Settle this with counsel before work starts, and see our guide.
How long does a reverse engineering analysis take?
It depends on what is being opened. A firmware extraction and binary analysis on a single device is a different job from a hundred-unit teardown programme. We scope it against your deadlines before quoting.
Can you work from source code instead?
Often, yes, and it is usually faster. When source is available under protective order, source code review may answer the question without a teardown. Many matters use both.
Do you provide consulting experts as well as testifying experts?
Yes. A consulting expert can assess the technology before you decide how to proceed, and that work stays privileged.
What does a recommendation cost?
Nothing. Our search, consultation, and recommendation are free and confidential. You engage the expert directly at their rate.
Request a Reverse Engineering Expert
Describe the product and the posture of your case and we will recommend the right expert, at no cost and in confidence. Tell us about your case, or browse the expert witness directory.