Integrated Circuit Patents (copyright issues)

As lots of other inventions in the world, many are not eligible for patents. Patentable things must be useful, novel and unobvious. Same applies to IC industry. After reading the agreement on IP at my company, it was interesting to find out that numerous integrated circuits do not meet the requirement of novelty, hence, not patentable and not protected. Even though a lot of effort is taken to design an IC, it is not necessarily unobvious.

That puts IC companies in a place where they are not protected against their circuits being copied. With modern technologies, even the resin protected chips can be scanned and replicated. This becomes a real issue when selling to countries that do not have IP laws.

On the good side, there is Integrated Circuit Topography Act that can protect not patented IP. If Company B patents what was previously registered with IC Topography Ministry by Company A, the latter can file a patent infringement case against Company B and be successful.

Conclusions are: be careful when selling chips or other IP to countries that have weak patent laws, and also cautious when filing a patent to avoid IP infringement with another company.