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From: Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Offshore firmware management
Date: Sun, 26 May 2024 09:59:56 -0700
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On 5/26/2024 9:42 AM, Don Y wrote:
> The economic aspect is always the kicker.  With high product costs,
> its easy to add a significant effort/cost to protect a design.
> But, when things get "dirt cheap", everything you add SOLELY to
> protect your IP is pure overhead; it adds no VALUE to your product!
> It's akin to throwing money at lawyers to try to get injunctions
> against adversaries (the product doesn't IMPROVE as a result of
> those actions.  and, you're attention has been diverted from
> adding new functionality to *defending* your existing design)

Yet another (video game) anecdote...

Hardware was REALLY important in that era as processors were
pretty limited (bus speeds of 1MB/s).  So, if you could add
hardware capabilities that couldn't FUNCTIONALLY *and* ECONOMICALLY
be replicated/emulated, you could add value AND protect your
design.

The obvious such choice (for raster games) was a custom BLTer.
It's functionality was easily emulated (because it is hard
to disguise when it is so heavily and obviously used!) -- but,
at a much higher cost (implementation in SSI/MSI).

As the functionality had value for other games, its development
costs could be amortized over a greater number of products/units.
To thwart folks trying to purchase just THAT component (e.g.,
via your "spare parts" service), you could price it astronomically
high and/or require the (alleged) defective device to be returned
in exchange for that replacement purchase.  So, you'd have had to
have purchased N of them legitimately in order to buy N replacements
(a losing proposition).

Note, of course, that this still doesn't prevent a counterfeiter
from offering an "upgrade kit" to be applied to one of your
old games at a reduced price to provide a knock-off "new game"!