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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?
"The trial court's instructions initially defined "legitimate reverse engineering" to allow copying and analyzing only "non-protectible concepts or techniques" embodied in a mask work." It would seem that nothing these days is "non-protectible" if RIAA, MPPA or SCO have anything to say about it.
Matthew Grint Midnight Artists
Ninth Circuit affirms $35 million judgment against semiconductor manufacturer
Case is rare appellate decision under Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984
Altera Corporation filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Clear Logic, Inc., a competitor in the semiconductor industry. Altera alleged that Clear Logic had violated the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, 17 U.S.C. 901 et seq. ("SCPA"), by using the bitstream generated when programming Altera programmable logic devices to create application-specific integrated circuits. A jury found in favor of Altera, and awarded more than $30 million in damages, plus an additional $5 million in interest and costs.
Clear Logic appealed to the Ninth Circuit, arguing that the trial court improperly instructed the jury regarding the affirmative defense of legitimate reverse engineering, which is provided for under the SCPA. The court affirmed, however, holding that certain misstatements of the law in the jury instructions were harmless error.
The trial court's instructions initially defined "legitimate reverse engineering" to allow copying and analyzing only "non-protectible concepts or techniques" embodied in a mask work. This was an incorrect statement of the law, but the court concluded that further instructions adequately provided correction. The later instructions explained that "it is permissible [under the SCPA] to reproduce 'a registered mask work' as a step in the process of creating an original chip, so long as the purpose of reproducing the chip is appropriate."
Accordingly, the court held that the jury was able to properly conclude that the Clear Logic mask works incorporated into the application-specific integrated circuits were not original, but were copies prohibited under the SCPA.
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And my question is: What the hell is a "mask"? Can someone please post the Wikipedia entry that will explain all the background information I need to know on the subject? It looks to me like a run of the mill, "he copied me" case. Why is this news?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
The 'mask' in this context can be thought of as a set of transparancies with lines on them that define wires on the chip. Chips are made with a photo-lithography process where light is shined onto silicon through a mask. The lines on the mask block the light from hitting the silicon and depending on the process the areas which are exposed on the silicon will be etched away by acids/solvents. Multiple masks are used to create different features/layers on the silicon. some create wires, others create transistors.
Maybe you'd like another article about global warming or the Iraq war?
does anyone else find the phrase "the jury properly rejected Clear Logic's argument" to be ironic?
Did Clear Logic:
1) just reverse engineer the masks of the FPGA to figure out how to decode the programming stream and automatically make an ASIC with the same functionality, or
2) actually clone significant sections of one or more of the FPGA masks themselves into the mask geometry generation step for the automatic ASIC design process, so that the geometry of the FPGA mask is reproduced (perhaps with edits, such as jumpers where programmable transistors would be) in the masks for the ASIC?
If 1), IMHO they were blameless. If 2), IMHO the jury called it correctly.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Imagine being on the jury for this case.
From the article:
Clear Logic appealed to the Ninth Circuit, arguing that the trial court improperly instructed the jury regarding the affirmative defense of legitimate reverse engineering, which is provided for under the SCPA. The court affirmed, however, holding that certain misstatements of the law in the jury instructions were harmless error. The trial court's instructions initially defined "legitimate reverse engineering" to allow copying and analyzing only "non-protectible concepts or techniques" embodied in a mask work. This was an incorrect statement of the law, but the court concluded that further instructions adequately provided correction. The later instructions explained that "it is permissible [under the SCPA] to reproduce 'a registered mask work' as a step in the process of creating an original chip, so long as the purpose of reproducing the chip is appropriate."
As an electrical engineer, I'm having a hard time fully following all the legalese on this - imagine having to learn what reverse-engineering is, what an FPGA is, and the entire design process while on the jury?
I bet they just sat back in their little deliberation box:
I dunno, they look guity to you, Jeb?
The only post worse than one from a Karma whore is one that calls for somebody to be modded down because you don't like their politics.
Maybe the guy really is a myopic jackass for getting his panties in a twist over a very obscure and complex ruling from a court he doesn't like... maybe not. I dunno. Reverse engineering laws are complex, and I admit that, not being an IP lawyer, I barely grasp them.
How about arguing against his point rather than making a personal attack and calling for him to be silenced (by begging mods to crank his post down to -1 where almost nobody will see it)?
Why do you hate Free Speech?
Seriously. Why? There's no room for debate on the point that you do, as you are trying to censor rather than debate, so the only question is, why do you hate Free Speech?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Q: Where do you go to sue somebody for violating a semiconductor law?
A: A Circuit Court!!!
Bad, Bad!!!
It seems like the distinction is similar to music recordings. That copying the majority of an audio recording, with a few tweaks of your own, is considered infringement. While the "underlying ideas" are not necessarily protected, eg. so you could play the exact same notes with very similar timings again on your own instrument, and that would not be considered to be a copyright violation. (eg. they could have reverse engineered the logic of the circuit and re-generated their own, different, layout)
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.
If I'm reading the article correctly, and the law, and the decision -
/if it's appropriate under IP law to do so/ - It allows them to reverse-engineer a photomask if it's public domain, has been licensed to them, or is owned outright by them - OR if they're trying to figure out how to debug/interface their own code that's being programmed onto an Altera FPGA. It does not seem either of these is the case.
/those/ signals to lay out their own ASIC.
The law in question allows someone to reproduce a photomask
What Clear Logic seems to have done is get ahold of an Altera FPGA / photomask, and reverse-engineer the programmer portion of the chip - And then made their own device, which translated signals that COULD HAVE been sent to an Altera Field Programmer into the Altera's internal signals to program the Gate Array, and used
Basically, they seem to have hijacked Altera's programming controller (a sizeable chunk of IP) for their own purposes. And probably didn't license it.
Altera is suitably disturbed because every one of the ASICs Clear Logic makes with their stolen work could have (in theory, anyway) been money in their pocket from licensing the field programmer or could have had their FPGA in place.
It's as if one has a dynamic web-page generator and backend database, and someone stole the code for that dynamic web page generator & backend database and used it to churn out their own static pages (and sold them) because one's program inherently produces good design.