Semiconductor Chip Protection

In 1984 Congress established a new form of intellectual property right for the protection of the masks used to create the semiconductor chips used in a variety of consumer and commercial products. This new form of protection was deemed necessary to compensate for the fact that copyright law did not protect useful articles such as semiconductor chips used in many appliances, and patent law provided inadequate protection for these chips, primarily because they were mere obvious innovations of prior art. The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 thus created an entirely new form of intellectual property protection. Because many of the concepts for semiconductor chip protection are based on copyright law principles, ...

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