A Bridge Between Copyright and Patent Law: Towards a Modern-Day Reapplication of the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act

This Paper analyzes the history of the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act (SCPA), 17 U.S.C. §§ 901–914, and asks why the statute is so seldom used in intellectual property litigation. Afterwards, this Paper makes the argument that the SCPA should be used more in intellectual property litigation, perhaps in tandem with patent litigation, and can be a viable form of protection for semiconductor micro-fabrication companies or integrated circuit design companies engaged in pioneering innovations within the cutting-edge field of semiconductor technology

Sega and Beyond: A Beacon for Fair Use Analysis … at Least as Far as It Goes

Symposium: Copyright Protection and Reverse Engineering of Softwar

A survey on security analysis of machine learning-oriented hardware and software intellectual property

Intellectual Property (IP) includes ideas, innovations, methodologies, works of authorship (viz., literary and artistic works), emblems, brands, images, etc. This property is intangible since it is pertinent to the human intellect. Therefore, IP entities are indisputably vulnerable to infringements and modifications without the owner’s consent. IP protection regulations have been deployed and are still in practice, including patents, copyrights, contracts, trademarks, trade secrets, etc., to address these challenges. Unfortunately, these protections are insufficient to keep IP entities from being changed or stolen without permission. As for this, some IPs require hardware IP protection mechanisms, and others require software IP protection techniques. To secure these IPs, researchers have explored the domain of Intellectual Property Protection (IPP) using different approaches. In this paper, we discuss the existing IP rights and concurrent breakthroughs in the field of IPP research; provide discussions on hardware IP and software IP attacks and defense techniques; summarize different applications of IP protection; and lastly, identify the challenges and future research prospects in hardware and software IP security

Yelling Fire and Hacking: Why the First Amendment Does Not Permit Distributing DVD Decryption Technology?

One of the consequences of the black-hole "no-hair" theorem in general relativity (GR) is that gravitational radiation (quasi-normal modes) from a perturbed Kerr black hole is uniquely determined by its mass and spin. Thus, the spectrum of quasi-normal mode frequencies have to be all consistent with the same value of the mass and spin. Similarly, the gravitational radiation from a coalescing binary black hole system is uniquely determined by a small number of parameters (masses and spins of the black holes and orbital parameters). Thus, consistency between different spherical harmonic modes of the radiation is a powerful test that the observed system is a binary black hole predicted by GR. We formulate such a test, develop a Bayesian implementation, demonstrate its performance on simulated data and investigate the possibility of performing such a test using previous and upcoming gravitational wave observations

The EC Directive on the Legal Protection of Computer Programs

The evolution of computer technology has launched questions regarding the proper scope of protection for computer software. The European Community (EC) recently adopted a Council Directive on the Legal Protection of Computer Programs (the Directive), which protects computer software under the copyright paradigm. The path to final adoption of the Directive, however, was marked by debates between diametrically opposed lobbying groups regarding the propriety of a reverse engineering exception to the exclusive right of reproduction. This Note discusses the lobbying efforts that led to a compromise and analyzes the Directive through a comparison to United States law. Next, the Note analyzes a look and feel infringement suit under the Directive in an attempt to discover current trends in the international copyright protection of computer software. The Note concludes that the Directive is a laudable step toward legitimizing the process of reverse engineering and promoting international standards of protection. Nonetheless, the author concludes that the decompilation exception found in the Directive is overly limited by the requirement that decompilation be indispensible to interoperability. The author argues that a broader reverse engineering right to discover underlying ideas would have better promoted the EC computer industry\u27s desire to break into the international software market

Limiting intellectual property : the competition interface

PhDThis is a study of legal limits of the exercise of intellectual property, with emphasis on chip designs. In Part One, the focus is on the economics of innovation dynamics and the nature of the social bargain underlying intellectual property. It analyses the function of intellectual property and the structure of protection of chip designs under the US chip law, the IPIC Treaty and the Agreement on TRIPS. It suggests that while protection of intellectual property is designed to promote technical innovation and enhance competition in the public favour, the innovation process is carried out in conditions of increasingly imperfect competition. On these grounds, a point is made to limit the exercise of proprietary rights in the welfare/efficiency perspective. Part Two addresses the treatment of legal limitations. An analysis is made concerning the evolution of the safeguarding provisions on which unauthorised use of copyright and patent in the British legal system relies. These safeguards, structured within the intellectual property law, have gradually been developed to also rely on a resurgent competition legislation, which has been considerably used by OECD countries to order the exercise of proprietary rights. The ability of modem competition law to induce an intellectual property order, and the features of the adjudicatory process of non-voluntary licences over UK patents are also examined. From the findings the emergence of; namely, a safeguarding policy is identified. The conceptualisation of this institutional policy, aiming at efficiency and welfare objectives related to the exercise of proprietary rights, is a central theme. It shows that safeguarding provisions intrinsic to intellectual property law is insufficient to pursue these objectives, and holds that to protect intellectual property without an effective control of anti-competitive practices is a distorting and unsustainable legal policy