514
6 Reverse Engineering of Microcircuits
6.2 Features of Providing Intellectual Property Rights
for Semiconductor Microcircuits
6.2.1 Features of Using the Process of Reverse Engineering
for Protection of Patent Rights
Patenting and licensing by insensible degrees had become an independent and fairly
successful business during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Great prominence is given today to patents and licenses for the right to use this patents in the
sphere of innovations and high technologies. Here, we can point out Texas Instruments, which became one of the first companies in early 1980s to actively patent its
technological, design, circuitry, and architectural solutions, protecting the growing
market of microelectronic products from competitors. As a result of such activities,
it became much more beneficial in most cases for the competitors to purchase such
innovative solutions (obtain a license to use a patent) than to spend time and money,
trying to create similar solutions independently [2].
Even if competitors managed to find similar process solutions, in controversial cases they needed to prove that such solutions had been created by them
independently and not stolen from the patent owner.
Clearly, the best method of such protection was to obtain an independent patent
for the solution. In case of litigation, any intruding company could receive such
penalties that in addition to the loss of business reputation, it was possible to end up
bankrupt.
Therefore, active development of services involved in ensuring and protecting
rights for intellectual property items began in semiconductor companies. These
services are responsible for legal protection of company’s IP items and growth of IP
items, the share of which in general assets of corporations can amount to hundreds
of millions of dollars today.
One of the main tasks of such services is to find and legitimately prove the facts
of violation of property rights. Today, one of the main instruments used to perform
this work is reverse engineering of circuits.
Figure 6.6 shows the correlation between the relative cost of known methods of IC
analysis and the possibility of copyright violation. Various methods can be used here:
literary review, standards, inspection, functional testing, and reverse engineering.
The use of re-engineering processes is what ensures the highest possibility of
detection of non-compliance (compliance) of the patented intellectual property. This
generalized chart is not exclusive to microelectronics and is fairly general in nature;
this trend is also found in aircraft industry, motor industry, food industry, etc.
Reverse engineering is the best way to determine whether a given product violates
the copyrights of the manufacturer. Of course, in order to do this, it is necessary to
legally purchase the analyzed product (car or plane part, drink, etc.) in the market
and examine it to understand how it was designed and what parts were used to make
6 Reverse Engineering of Microcircuits
6.2 Features of Providing Intellectual Property Rights
for Semiconductor Microcircuits
6.2.1 Features of Using the Process of Reverse Engineering
for Protection of Patent Rights
Patenting and licensing by insensible degrees had become an independent and fairly
successful business during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Great prominence is given today to patents and licenses for the right to use this patents in the
sphere of innovations and high technologies. Here, we can point out Texas Instruments, which became one of the first companies in early 1980s to actively patent its
technological, design, circuitry, and architectural solutions, protecting the growing
market of microelectronic products from competitors. As a result of such activities,
it became much more beneficial in most cases for the competitors to purchase such
innovative solutions (obtain a license to use a patent) than to spend time and money,
trying to create similar solutions independently [2].
Even if competitors managed to find similar process solutions, in controversial cases they needed to prove that such solutions had been created by them
independently and not stolen from the patent owner.
Clearly, the best method of such protection was to obtain an independent patent
for the solution. In case of litigation, any intruding company could receive such
penalties that in addition to the loss of business reputation, it was possible to end up
bankrupt.
Therefore, active development of services involved in ensuring and protecting
rights for intellectual property items began in semiconductor companies. These
services are responsible for legal protection of company’s IP items and growth of IP
items, the share of which in general assets of corporations can amount to hundreds
of millions of dollars today.
One of the main tasks of such services is to find and legitimately prove the facts
of violation of property rights. Today, one of the main instruments used to perform
this work is reverse engineering of circuits.
Figure 6.6 shows the correlation between the relative cost of known methods of IC
analysis and the possibility of copyright violation. Various methods can be used here:
literary review, standards, inspection, functional testing, and reverse engineering.
The use of re-engineering processes is what ensures the highest possibility of
detection of non-compliance (compliance) of the patented intellectual property. This
generalized chart is not exclusive to microelectronics and is fairly general in nature;
this trend is also found in aircraft industry, motor industry, food industry, etc.
Reverse engineering is the best way to determine whether a given product violates
the copyrights of the manufacturer. Of course, in order to do this, it is necessary to
legally purchase the analyzed product (car or plane part, drink, etc.) in the market
and examine it to understand how it was designed and what parts were used to make