Mask work

July 24, 2009
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

A mask work is a two or three-dimensional layout or topography of an integrated circuit (IC or “chip”), i.e. the arrangement on a chip of semiconductor devices such as transistors and passive electronic components such as resistors and interconnections. By extension, it also refers to the copyright-like intellectual property right conferring time-limited exclusivity to reproduction of a particular layout. The layout is called a mask work because, in photolithographic processes, the multiple etched layers within actual integrated circuits are each created using a mask, called the photomask, to permit or block the light at specific locations, sometimes for hundreds of chips on a wafer simultaneously