A Study On The Imbalance International Protection System Of Integrated Circuits Layout Design Protection In Trips

The layout design of integrated circuits is one of the three importantparts in integrated circuits industry which are layout design, manufacture,and testing. Layout design has been paid high attention by the developedcountries since the integrated circuits were created. The developedcountries give strong legal means to protect the layout design, and evenprotect the final products which include the integrated circuits made bylayout design. However, on the low intellectual property creativity of thelayout circuit, these protection legal means are too stronger to makedeserved effect in real life. The strong and imbalance legal means ofdeveloped countries do not suit all countries, especially the developingcountries which the technique and law are still at a low level.Nevertheless, in order to keep the economy benefits and techniquesuperiority, the developed countries make great efforts to establish theunitary international legal system to protect the layout design. Thedeveloped countries tried twice and finally made it success that theAgreement On Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Right(TRIPS) was fixed in World Trade Organization (WTO). TRIPS not only gives the life to the Treaty on Intellectual Property in Respect ofIntegrated Circuits(IPIC)which is still not into effect, but also adds thestrong legal means which are not added in the IPIC by the developedcounties. TRIPS make the imbalance international legal system of layoutdesign become the domestic legislative standards to the members ofWTO.China is the biggest developing country in WTO. So China shouldcomply with the promised TRIPS obligations. However, to the problemswhich are caused by the imbalance protection legal system in TRIPS, Itshould be known that China should establish the suitable protection legalsystem of layout design, as well as make efforts to adapt the TRIPS.