Exactly. For example, we had a patent on a method of improving the print quality of small fonts derived algebraically from larger ones. You save a lot of memory by generating small font data this way so you can offer more fonts or more characters in a given ROM space by using this method. Trouble is, simple algorithms can produce distorted characters. Our technique stored 4 bits per character to indicate which of 16 variants on the algorithm to use to ensure each chracter was perfectly formed. By disassembling competitors code and data we were able to see if they had used our patented method. In fact there wasno other way of doing it. The code was not the same as ours, they usually used a completely different micro but we could still tell if they had used the technique.

Ian