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Chip Maker Gets $35 Million Judgment
Neoflexycurrent writes "The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a $35 million judgment against Clear Logic for violation of the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984. The court concluded that the jury properly rejected Clear Logic's argument that it had legitimately reverse engineered Plaintiff Altera Corporation's mask work design to create cheaper application-specific integrated circuits."
Altera makes chips that can be programmed to do different things (FPGAs).
Clear Logic made "application specific integrated circuits" - ie they only do one specific thing that the customer needs, but are cheaper than programmable chips if you buy enough.
The issue here is that Clear Logic's mechanism for receiving the design from the customer and making it into a chip is to use the programming data (bitstream) for an Altera chip. Then the data is used together with an image (mask) copied from an Altera chip to create the ASIC.
The ruling is that Clear Logic's use of the mask in building the ASIC is not legitimate reverse engineering, but illegal re-use of Altera's IP.
FYI: Clear Logic seems to have been dead since 2003.
editorial: only $35M?
NO !!!!
I worked for Clear Logic from its begining to its end (we ran out of money paying lawyers). We never used any Altera masks ever. We spent a significant amount of time reverse engineering the masks so we would be legal. I believe the judge never understood this.