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If you are a technology innovator,
you’ll want your efforts and
inventions to be protected from
copying. Patents are a first
line of defense, but enforcing
them though litigation may be
expensive and time-consuming.
A more preemptive approach is to
implement your IP as a package
that is all but impossible to copy,
e.g. as a dedicated application
specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
Due to the long-term trend of
price reductions for advanced
(but not necessarily leading-
edge) foundry technologies, it has
become an attractive and cost-
effective option for innovative
SME’s to design such an ASIC.
Patents are your first line
of protection, but can you
enforce them?
The origin of patents may be traced
back in time to Queen Elizabeth I
of England who granted monopoly
privileges to businesses by means
of letters patent, meaning public
documents. These ultimately enabled
investors to form business ventures to
explore business opportunities in the
New World.
Starting out as a royal permission
for the exclusive commercialization
of land, patents have since evolved
to become legally enforceable rights
that provide exclusive control over
the production and sale of Intellectual
Property (IP), otherwise known as
inventions.
A company who implements an
invention without the permission
of the patent holder is said to have
infringed the patent. But it is up to
the owner of the patent to discover
the infringement and initiate court
proceedings. For some technology
companies, especially startups and
SME’s, this may place an important
burden on their efforts to bring
their innovative products to market.
For one, as an innovator, you often
have financial constraints, especially
because you investment costs –
particularly R&D – are incurred before
they have any prospect of revenues.
Your PCBs will be reverse engineered,
fast
At some point, intellectual property
in the technology domain has to
be physically implemented and
manufactured. This still often takes
the form of a PCB (printed circuit
board) comprised of a variety of
mounted discrete components, which
may include a power supply, Bluetooth
functionality and a microcontroller.
The problem with this widely-used
approach is illustrated by an internet
search query for the phrase “PCB
reverse engineering”. This returns
over 20,000 hits and clearly represents
ASICs allow cost-effective IP protection for
technology inventions
IC-LINK’S PHILL CHRISTIE
34 l New-Tech Magazine Europe