6.2 Features of Providing Intellectual Property Rights …
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elements in combination with the possibility of their automatic identification (active
element of the interconnection—passive component), high-speed modeling, and
recovery of equivalent electrical and topological circuits used by these companies and
other similar specialized companies—all these helped make this method the most
effective in countering infringements of patent and license rights of law-abiding
manufacturers.
In further sections of this chapter, we are going to consider in detail, features
of the process route of microcircuit reverse engineering used to identify hardware
Trojans introduced by intruders.
As a rule, such companies can also provide their clients (semiconductor
customers) with access to virtual inventions of their intellectual properties (digital
and graphic data) from scanning electronic microscopes (SEM), which can view
all suspicious areas of the IP topology with high resolution, thus increasing the
possibility of detecting Trojans.
Since the main trends in development of modern microelectronics suggest using
newer and newer materials, smaller and smaller basic elements, thinner and thinner
material layers (up to the nuclear and molecular levels), certain specific problems
of the so-called sample preparation emerge here—now it is necessary to switch to
a completely new technological level of analysis methods. Below we will show, for
example, that ion beams replace old mechanical disks for cutting or polishing of
silicon wafers, and these are only separate factors.
Only very large semiconductor companies or specialized laboratories of the
US Department of Defense can afford to use such high-tech precision analytical
equipment.
Therefore, small manufacturers have virtually no chance to preserve their intellectual property rights in this war without significant financial costs. Absolute majority
of these small firms have created and developed their own patent and license services,
the main task of which is connecting expert and patent spheres of intellectual activity
and bringing the results of these studies to the level acceptable to be reviewed in court.
In particular, most large semiconductor companies, being manufacturers of large
quantities of costly semiconductor components, especially the ones for military and
spacecraft industry, consider project-licensed work as one of the two directions of
patent monetization.
First of all, this includes selling licenses for the right to produce their products to
the competitors.
The second direction appeared with emergence of effective managers of the new
type in semiconductor companies; these managers had not been directly connected
to the semiconductor field but received supplies of various microcircuits from this
industry in the form of component parts.
First of all, this applied to large telecommunication companies. Here, we can cite
a very characteristic example from the practical activity described [2].
The head of the patent group of a well-known semiconductor company had the
specific task of developing the strategy of monetization of the existing IP patents
with the help of legal services with regard to a wide telecommunication company
that widely used microcircuits produced by this semiconductor company.
517
elements in combination with the possibility of their automatic identification (active
element of the interconnection—passive component), high-speed modeling, and
recovery of equivalent electrical and topological circuits used by these companies and
other similar specialized companies—all these helped make this method the most
effective in countering infringements of patent and license rights of law-abiding
manufacturers.
In further sections of this chapter, we are going to consider in detail, features
of the process route of microcircuit reverse engineering used to identify hardware
Trojans introduced by intruders.
As a rule, such companies can also provide their clients (semiconductor
customers) with access to virtual inventions of their intellectual properties (digital
and graphic data) from scanning electronic microscopes (SEM), which can view
all suspicious areas of the IP topology with high resolution, thus increasing the
possibility of detecting Trojans.
Since the main trends in development of modern microelectronics suggest using
newer and newer materials, smaller and smaller basic elements, thinner and thinner
material layers (up to the nuclear and molecular levels), certain specific problems
of the so-called sample preparation emerge here—now it is necessary to switch to
a completely new technological level of analysis methods. Below we will show, for
example, that ion beams replace old mechanical disks for cutting or polishing of
silicon wafers, and these are only separate factors.
Only very large semiconductor companies or specialized laboratories of the
US Department of Defense can afford to use such high-tech precision analytical
equipment.
Therefore, small manufacturers have virtually no chance to preserve their intellectual property rights in this war without significant financial costs. Absolute majority
of these small firms have created and developed their own patent and license services,
the main task of which is connecting expert and patent spheres of intellectual activity
and bringing the results of these studies to the level acceptable to be reviewed in court.
In particular, most large semiconductor companies, being manufacturers of large
quantities of costly semiconductor components, especially the ones for military and
spacecraft industry, consider project-licensed work as one of the two directions of
patent monetization.
First of all, this includes selling licenses for the right to produce their products to
the competitors.
The second direction appeared with emergence of effective managers of the new
type in semiconductor companies; these managers had not been directly connected
to the semiconductor field but received supplies of various microcircuits from this
industry in the form of component parts.
First of all, this applied to large telecommunication companies. Here, we can cite
a very characteristic example from the practical activity described [2].
The head of the patent group of a well-known semiconductor company had the
specific task of developing the strategy of monetization of the existing IP patents
with the help of legal services with regard to a wide telecommunication company
that widely used microcircuits produced by this semiconductor company.