If the code is covered by patents, extracting it doesn't give you anything that reading the public patent wouldn't (if the patent was written as it should have been, to inform, and not obfuscated or ran through incomprehensible legal jargon).
And if it's a trade secret, then you relinquished it the moment you sold objects containing it. Though I realize DRM/anti-reverse engineering laws are trying to take away our right to examine how stuff works, they are absurdly immoral laws, and breaking them should never be described as "theft".
If the code is covered by patents, extracting it doesn't give you anything that reading the public patent wouldn't (if the patent was written as it should have been, to inform, and not obfuscated or ran through incomprehensible legal jargon).
And if it's a trade secret, then you relinquished it the moment you sold objects containing it. Though I realize DRM/anti-reverse engineering laws are trying to take away our right to examine how stuff works, they are absurdly immoral laws, and breaking them should never be described as "theft".