Yes, there is a way but I have no idea how to do it.
I got a promo usb stick, it had 2 partitions or drives.
One was write protected, the other was writeable.
After a lot of googling, I found forum posts about utilites to remove the write protection.
It involved re-initialising the low level format of the usb stick, lost ALL data on both partitions.
Other than that no idea how it did the write protection.
Another idea would be to look at the data sheet for the flash device used on the usd stick, if the flash device has a write enable pin, cut the track the pulls it high or low.