Technology dismantlers: reverse engineering proves patently profitable.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: TAEUS Inc. - Biography

Jim Adams, chief technology officer of Colorado Springs-based TAEUS Inc., has been curious about the inner workings of technology since he was a kid. "My mother would get very upset with me when I would take apart radios to see what was inside," he remembered.

Fast-forward a couple of decades to the 1970s, and disassembling technology to analyze its failures became part of Adams' job at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. After a number of engineering gigs in the private sector, Adams was the first person CEO Art Nutter called after he founded TAEUS in 1993. Adams went from the company's first consultant to the company's first employee soon thereafter.

"I did the technical work and (Nutter) did the sales," said Adams of the company's early days. "We just started adding people and we've been bootstrapping ourselves ever since."

Without any outside investment or debt of any kind, TAEUS has grown into a 25-person company that's renowned for its ability to reverse engineer just about anything--thus the company's moniker: an acronym for Tearing Apart Everything Under the Sun. "We do reverse engineering of everything," said Adams. "There's nothing that's the norm."

TAEUS has reviewed more than 20,000 patents over the course of its existence, tearing apart everything from cell phones to software code to ultrasonic fish finders to garage door openers. Beyond the reverse engineers on its full-time staff, the company has an extensive network of technical experts and access to technology "boneyards" to determine if patented technology was actually derived from the public domain.

Reverse engineering "is where we built our reputation,"...