Molhova Miglena, Intellectual property protection and reverse engineering of computer programs in the European Community and Bulgaria

This paper aims to investigate how the patent and copyright laws interact when it comes to the protection of computer programs, with a special focus on reverse engineering. The paper investigates the European law, also discussing this type of protection in Bulgaria, and the EU law applied in one of the Member States. Reverse engineering is the process of analysing a product and working backwards to discover how it works. Even if long-accepted, the practice in the manufacturing industries, when it comes to software, is still a controversial practice, consisting of actions that are often regarded as unlawful. The paper argues that considering the nature of computer programs to be intellectual products and fitting them into the existing legislative framework has the potential to create more problems in the markets rather than to successfully regulate the economic relations arising from the development and commercial use of the programs as a product, specifically when it comes to reverse...