Integrated Circuit Layout-designs Of Intellectual Property Protection

Integrated circuits (hereinafter referred to as"ICs") can be found in a wide variety of household products besides high-tech electronic equipment. Alarm clocks, cameras, lamps, air conditioners, and even common kitchen appliances, such as refrigerators and toaster ovens, may employ semiconductor technology. Outside the home, cars, airplanes, traffic lights, and railroad crossings may contain ICs. In short, the scope of usage of ICs has grown recently to encompass products never before imagined. The future will only see further expansion of this list. The ICs industry includes manufactures, design and encapsulation and the intellectual property connected with the ICs design is the Layout Design Right of the ICs (hereinafter referred to as"Layout Design").Compared to the traditional intellectual property rights, Layout Design Right Law is different from the Patent Law and the Copyright Law. However it has some qualities of both Patent Law and Copyright Law and it is a new type intellectual property including the reverse engineering system. Based on the 1984 Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of the United States (hereinafter referred to as "1984 SCPA"), this article tries to introduce the main content of the Layout Design Right Law system and analyzes some court cases. The author holds that the current Layout Design Right Law system is useful to protect the Layout Design and to promote the development of the ICs industries.The main contents of this article are as follows:Because of its own characters, traditional Patent Law, Copyright Law and Trade secret Law can not provide protection for the Layout Design. Due to the scant protection for IC layouts, by the late 1970s, chip piracy grew to become a serious problem for the chip industry, which cost millions of dollars to design and develop. As a result, the manufacturers of ICs sought some sui generis (of its own kind or class) form of intellectual property protection for this backbone of modern technology and in 1984, in response to complaints by the semiconductor industry, the U.S. Congress realized that some form of protection was needed for the semiconductor industry and passed the 1984 SCPA.Then, starting from the analysis of the 1984 SCPA, this article states the importance of the protection for the Layout Design, the case Brooktree Corp. V. Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the main contents of the 1984 SCPA especially the reverse engineering and the nationality of the Layout Design.After the passage of the 1984 SCPA, many industrialized countries quickly adopted their own laws protecting Layout Designs. International agreements also began to emerge as countries worked together to ensure ICs protection around the world. In 1989, an international treaty, the Treaty on Intellectual Property in respect of Integrated Circuits was concluded in Washington DC and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of 1994 also provides the protection for Layout Design. Thus the international protection system for Layout Design has established.However, in practice there are few cases of Layout Design disputes which entered into the judicial procedure and in the United States, there is only one appellate court decision regarding the 1984 SCPA, and courts in other countries with similar legislation seldom invoke these acts. This Article attempts to analyze this phenomenon: the provision of reverse engineering in the law, technological advances and the commonness of intellectual property cases in high technology.At the end of this article, the author introduced the Regulations on the protection of Layout Design of Integrated Circuit of People's Republic of China and the distinction from the 1984 SCPA of the Unite States.