[1] Bowers was the patent holder of a system called Cadjet that simplified interfacing with CAD software,[2] which he began to license commercially in 1989.

Together, the products were marketed as Designer's Toolkit, which was sold with a shrink-wrap license that prohibited reverse engineering.

[1] The District Court of Massachusetts concluded that Bowers was entitled to damages and found that the shrink wrap license tied to Bowers's software preempted any fair use case for reverse engineering as allowed by Copyright law.

[1] In its decision, the court cited a number of prior cases involving contractual constraints that extend copyright law: A dissenting opinion was entered by Judge Dyk agreeing with all decisions except that a copyright law does not preempt a state contract.

Reverse engineering is considered necessary to be to keep up with "feature wars," such as the issue in this case, and it is also essential for interoperability and security purposes.