Yes, I do agree with what you say.
But think of where the OP is coming from. He asked a fairly simple question:
how can he protect his design. IMO, he needed a fairly simple answer:
generate an MDE. Splitting the db is not a simple procedure for people new
to Access. Now they need to understand linked tables, & how to relink them
when the file locations change. This is significantly more complicated than
clicking some buttons to get an MDE.
My thought process was, that it would be easier for the OP to learn about
MDEs first, then discover db splitting later
TC