My first job in the late 90s involved an entirely analog power supply. They sensibly didn’t even share the full schematics with users. We spent a lot of time tweaking the analog PID loop so that it could respond to sudden changes in set point or load without too much overshoot, too slow of a response, or too long of settling time.
A product with specialized hardware is rarer today. That same PID loop is done in software today. So you need to guard the software, not the hardware.
For the past few years I have worked with an excellent manufacturer of embedded processor boards who is very reluctant to provide hardware documentation. They are great to work with because any problem you have with their product they jump on and give personal attention from the people who designed the board. They’ll give you PDFs of small portions of the schematic or small parts of a few layers of artwork. They cannot provide an entire layer of artwork. This is confusing because I cannot imagine there is someone out there who would sell a similar processor board if only they could steal the artwork, perhaps use it to create a CAD database, and work out a bill of materials. I’m guessing people willing to go to that much trouble, even if they're located in the country that is the favorite whipping boy associated with IP theft, would just lay out their own board.
This type of secrecy becomes absurd when someone cannot even share the idea behind their product. This happens typically at startup events where companies that sound as ridiculous as “Twitter” or “Google” give their pitches. During the networking portion, you’ll meet someone working on a new app for tablet computers. What does it do? They don’t want to say. Even saying aloud what it does, they think, could cause people to steal their idea. This is absurd. Most the value is in the algorithms and the software realization of them. The rest is in having a motivated team to support it.
Am I understating the value of hardware simply because it’s something I know well? Can anyone think of any ideas from recent history that are so great, like the creature’s realization in 2001: A Space Odyssey that swinging a bone delivers more momentum and speed than a hand, that simply saying them aloud in a group of entrepreneurs would cause someone to go off and replicate it?
