But either something is patented or otherwise protected, or it isn’t. You can’t sell a car whose secret sauce to high margin sales is a fender production method that will be obvious to anyone taking it apart and then cry foul when someone does take it apart.

> buy a single licence of your software, reverse engineer it, change it so that they get features for free they otherwise would have to pay for etc.

That seems like standard licensing? The forbidden part about unlicensed use of software is using it.