Can you give any comparable examples of reverse-engineering having occurred in the last decade? It seems to me as though it's easier than ever to halt that sort of thing. For example, embed some form of DRM in the device/firmware and then the reverse engineering attempt becomes a DRM circumvention attempt. Or, embed some bit of patented software and claim patent protections.
The example that comes to mind is George Hotz's PS3 "hacking" which brought about a massive lawsuit from Sony.
Samba team reversed the binary protocol for interop with Free Software, at a time when Microsoft, a convicted monopolist, was being investigated by the EU and the U.S.justice department.
This is a very specific example and I wouldn't go by it alone as a precedent.
The example that comes to mind is George Hotz's PS3 "hacking" which brought about a massive lawsuit from Sony.