INAL, but note that patents don't need to be reversed (they have to be public) and that reverse engineering doesn't need to infringe copyright.

So do reverse engineer them: what you'll find is not patented (if it were it couldn't be secret) and if it's limited to ideas, not implementations, is not subject to copyrights.

Reverse engineering isn't illegal in on itself. In fact, some (mild) legal exceptions even exist to support it (they may not be as strong as they should be).