Japan's Retreat from Reverse Engineering: An Unnecessary Surrender.

The article focuses on the proposal put forward by Japan to authorize reverse engineering or decompilation. It is stated that Japan formed the Japanese Council for Examination and Research to reevaluate the Japanese copyright protection for computer software. The Council recommended relaxing copyright protection laws to allow limited reverse engineering. However, the U.S. criticized the Japanese proposal, declaring it contrary to international norms. As a result, the Council withdrew its proposal. The article analyzes the validity of Japanese proposal in the light of U.S. and European Community (EC) copyright law. It concludes that Japan's retreat from the proposal was not required. U.S. and EC copyright law within the framework of the Berne Convention, allow reverse engineering.