Yep.  Reverse engineering is done all the time by the owner of the "part" or finished good. 

For example, a small company changes hands and / or vendors to get a better price --- think of all the CE products that have moved from Japan and Korea to China.  In many cases, the factory did the engineering from a cusomers concept and feature set.  That factory is not going to share the engineering specs and / or CNC programs they produced with a competitor for free.  This I know. 

John