Other short titles |
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Long title | An act to amend title 28, United States Code, with respect to the places where court shall be held in certain judicial districts, and for other purposes. |
Acronyms (colloquial) | SCPA |
Nicknames | Federal District Court Organization Act of 1984 |
Enacted by | the 98th United States Congress |
Effective | November 8, 1984 |
Citations | |
Public law | 98–620 |
Statutes at Large | 98 Stat. 3335 aka 98 Stat. 3347 |
Codification | |
Acts amended | Trademark Act of 1946 |
Titles amended | |
U.S.C. sections created | 17 U.S.C. ch. 9 § 901 et seq. |
U.S.C. sections amended | 15 U.S.C. ch. 22 § 1051 et seq. |
Legislative history | |
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The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 (or SCPA) is an act of the US Congress that makes the layouts of integrated circuits legally protected upon registration, and hence illegal to copy without permission.
Prior to 1984, it was not necessarily illegal to produce a competing chip with an identical layout. As the legislative history for the SCPA explained, patent and copyright protection for chip layouts, chip topographies, was largely unavailable. This led to considerable complaint by U.S. chip manufacturers—notably, Intel, which, along with the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), took the lead in seeking remedial legislation—against what they termed "chip piracy." During the hearings that led to enactment of the SCPA, chip industry representatives asserted that a pirate could for $10,000 copy a chip design that had cost its original manufacturer upwards from $100,000 to design.
In 1984 the United States enacted the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 (the SCPA) to protect the topography of semiconductor chips. The SCPA is found in title 17, U.S. Code, sections 901-914 (17 U.S.C. §§ 901-914).
Japan and European Community (EC) countries soon followed suit and enacted their own, similar laws protecting the topography of semiconductor chips.
Chip topographies are also protected by TRIPS, an international treaty.
Although the U.S. SCPA is codified in title 17 (copyrights), the SCPA is not a copyright or patent law. Rather, it is a sui generis law resembling a utility model law or Gebrauchsmuster. It has some aspects of copyright law, some aspects of patent law, and in some ways, it is completely different from either. From Brooktree, ¶ 23:
The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 was an innovative solution to this new problem of technology-based industry. While some copyright principles underlie the law, as do some attributes of patent law, the Act was uniquely adapted to semiconductor mask works, in order to achieve appropriate protection for original designs while meeting the competitive needs of the industry and serving the public interest."
In general, the chip topography laws of other nations are also sui generis laws. Nevertheless, copyright and patent case law illuminate many aspects of the SCPA and its interpretation.