James Mcquade said:
...you must provide proof of ownership and rights to the plc program - required...
Yes James,
Even if you were given a machine, or have bought it and now own it, the intellectual property, that is the password protected PLC program, is still not yours by default. Rockwell are very keen to advertise their security policy regarding this matter so as to assure their valuable customers that their protected intellectual property is safe and will not be disclosed by the very company providing these security measures. So, in reality, anyone who does not own such intellectual property, should not be able to gain access to it, even by contacting Rockwell.
Markn902 said:
...only to copy the program and put it on a separate PLC to get a separate downed unit up and working...
Markn902,
If you are looking to copy a protected program into another similar or identical machine, then you would normally not have the rights to replicate someone else's
copyrighted work (remember that word). While you may not see any harm in doing this, the OEM or author might.
As it is most often very difficult for someone other than the OEM or author to prove definitive ownership of said intellectual property to Rockwell, they will not entertain circumventing password protected controllers. They do, however, provide methods to factory reset password protected controllers, which, of course, clears the processor's memory.
As we are dealing with legacy equipment here, there has been allusions made as to what you cannot discuss and what you have to do to try and achieve your goal. But these such alluded to measures are not possible with more conventional equipment. Such measures have been designed out. But whether using legacy or contemporary equipment, Rockwell expressly state that they do not provide any service or procedure to circumvent or disclose any of their equipment's protected contents to anyone that should not have access to it...
562626 - Rockwell Automation’s “Factory-Reset” Policy
Access Level: Everyone
Contacting an RA Vendor, or Rockwell themselves, knowing full well that you do not own the intellectual property, should turn out to be fruitless. Anything else is contradictory to their security policy of never disclosing password protected user content i.e. RA Vendors or Support staff should not be divulging any possible circumvention methods they may be aware of to anyone other than the definitive author, which again, can be hard to prove, even for that author.
As you appear to have found a "way" to achieve your goal, you probably could not care less about all this, at this stage?
Something else to ponder...
Technically, the theft of intellectual property would require that the intellectual property be
copyrighted, and not just protected by security measures. One is then accused of copyright infringement. If an OEM or author of a PLC program has not copyrighted their material, and has just secured it, and you gain access to it, then what rights have they to come after you, at all?
It is because most programmers do not copyright their material that Rockwell state that they cannot be sure of anyone's ownership, definitively, and so will not assist in circumventing any security measures that may be in place.
Regards,
George
