I was under the impression that a couple of ticks in one's device programming software is about all what the manufacturers provide to protect a mcu, especially if it is the state-of-the-art AT89C2051... Is this what you are reffering to as "protection *scheme*"? :-)

Just a sidenote, our preferred device programmer's software has a quite useful concept of "projects", where all the setting regarding the chip (including the lockbits' setting, and also serialization setup and current status) are associated to the bin/hexfile and optionally locked (under password). After a certain point, the people from manufacturing dept. responsible for the device progeamming started to _demand_ that they are given projects rather than the plain bin/hexfiles...Also, some chips' manufacturers wisely store the lockbit etc. settings directly into the output bin/hexfile from the toolchain (PICs come into my mind, although I did not want to use them as a positive example... :-) ).

My point was, that the price of straight copying (and other similar immoral or illegal activities) shall be taken into account when setting up a sales strategy for a mcu-based product - yet this price is barely to be found (nor even hinted for) in the glossy material handed out at the shows. So, there is no point pretending that "it is illegal so it does not exist", and this is the right place to discuss it as openly as possible...

JW