Easter eggs as IP protection in software
- by Simon
I work in embedded software, and for some reason, management wants to hide an Easter egg as means of IP protection. They call it a watermark, and since our software interact with the video preview feed (the image displayed on a screen before you take a photo), they want me to implement a trigger which will react to some unusual video input (a video konami code like dark - bright - dark - bright - whatever). When this trigger fires, something strange happens (which is outside of the normal behavior of the software).
The goal is to check whether our software is included in a device. Does it sound like a good idea? I have many argument against this move:
What if the konami code is too sensitive and user triggers it?
Does this kind of watermark have any legal value?
What if this "feature" is discovered by the client?
The performance penalty should be very small, since the soft run on small devices.
I am the one developping this trigger. If things go wrong, what is my responsibility?
What is your opinion about this method? I can't find a link, but I remember seeing an answer on this site suggesting that putting Easter eggs for protection purpose was a good idea. Has anyone tried it with good results?
