In the case that property holder and defendant are competitors in the semiconductor industry. The property holder produced a PLD (Programmable Logic Device) chip to perform various logic functions. defendant produces different types of chips, called ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit), which performs different functions than the property holder’s chip. However, the property holder believes that the layout design of the chip ASIC produced by the defendant (called the mask work in the United States) duplicated layout design that he registered which is obtained from PLD Chip Reverse Engineering.

PLD Chip Reverse Engineering

PLD Chip Reverse Engineering clause on the one hand protects the interests of the owner of the layout design and on the other hand promotes technological innovation. In PLD reverse engineering, the second layout design must not be substantially the same as the first layout design.

As long as there is evidence that substantial investment and effort has been made in the development of the update new layout design, not just 100% cloning, it does not constitute infringement, even if the two layout designs are similar in some substantive parts.

The law actually allows competitors to copy microcontroller layout designs, but only if the purpose of reproduction is to develop their own original layout design.

As long as a PLD layout design embodies a low degree of creativity in any aspect, it can be considered original, and the requirements for creativity here are quite low.

In the Microcontroller reverse engineering process, competitors can take pictures and copy the registered layout design, but if competitors use this information to produce a substantially identical layout design, then it cannot be called legal reverse engineering. 1 Legal reverse engineering refers to taking pictures and copying layout designs, but the purpose of photographing and copying is to analyze the research, and combine the results of analysis and research into their own layout design to generate unique and genuine Layout design.

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