廠商花費相當多的金錢、時間創建具有每一個客戶習性與特徵的特殊機密資訊，作為市場競爭優勢，本文稱這些資訊為「客戶名單」。本研究係分析客戶名單最佳保護期間之決策。
本研究的基本假定包括：（1）市場競爭廠商皆是在不確定情境下之風險中立與理性決策者；（2）本客戶名單之市場結構為寡占或獨占；（3）該市場每一期的營運規模固定；（4）還原工程和獨立複製成功皆具隨機性質；（5）還原工程和獨立複製成功廠商家數的機率分配為「卜瓦松分配」。
本研究建構客戶名單保護期間最佳化決策過程之模式，探討還原工程成功、獨立複製成功、市場結構、產銷成本、客戶名單保護費和市場價格對此決策的影響。

A firm expends money and time to construct “customers-specific confidential information” which contains special information about the habitual behavior and traits for each customer, in order to increase competitiveness in the market. In this paper, we describe this information as a “customer list.” This study analyzes the optimal horizon decisions for protecting such information.
The basic assumptions of this study are: (1) market competitors are rational decision makers and risk neutral in uncertain situation, (2) market structure involved in such customer list is oligopoly or monopoly, (3) market size of every operational period is fixed, (4) the chance of successful reverse engineering and independent replication are random, and (5) the probability distribution of the number of the success of reverse engineering and independent replication are Poisson probability distribution.
This paper establishes an optimization model for the decision-making processes and choices of the protection horizon for customer list, and indicates that some important factors, including chance of successful reverse engineering, successful independent replication, market structure, costs of production and promotion, protection expense of customer list, and market price, influence this decision.