Intellectual Property Protection in the EDA Industry

Whenever a business in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry invests a significant amount of time, money or effort to develop some form of competitive software or hardware advantage for the EDA marketplace, it is important to protect such proprietary interest legally. Typically, this is accomplished by acquiring patents, copyrights, mask works, trademarks, or trade secrets, or collectively "intellectual property." This protection provides the owner of the property with significant rights and benefits, including: Among the different forms of intellectual property, patents may extend the broadest scope of protection, particularly with respect to software algorithms used in proprietary EDA tools. Patents protect innovative, useful, and non-obvious ideas and concepts, and provide a patent owner with the right to exclude others, for 17 years, from making, using, or selling inventions. In short, the patent owner has a virtual monopoly over the ideas and concepts covered by the patent, even against an "innocent" competitor who independently develops, manufactures, or distributes infringing products. ° Enhancement of company valuation (when valued as part of a corporation's capital assets); Inventions that are patentable generally include devices, compositions of matter and processes. Examples of patentable subject matter include: electronic hardware, and computer software, particularly unique methods for logic design, partitioning, synthesis, simulation, emulation, testing, and verification. ° Source of future income (e.g., royalty fees from licensing);