Our vendor provides us a javascript library that we use on the client-side to do some data collection and they encrypt the data before sending out (to their collecting server) using Ajax.
They minified/obfuscated the javascript so that we can't tell easily from the code what they are collecting.
We have asked them if they can provide an un-minified/de-obfucated version so that we can debug it when there is a problem but they said no and the reason is that its their Intellectual Property.
My question is that because we have all the code downloaded to every user's browser and in theory we can manually decode it anyway. Are they really in the position to NOT provide us the un-minified/de-obfuscated code?
So here we have two questions. First question is about the law. If they are owners of this code, they can determine any variants of using this code. If they bought them, theirs rights are restricted by the agreement.
Second question is about sence of doing this way. There is no clear answer. I think (but this is only my opinion) that this is not good idea to hide code from you in development process. But... see point first.