Creating a New Kind of Intellectual Property: Applying the Lessons of the Chip Law to Computer Programs

of Law. 1. Semiconductor chips, often referred to simply as "chips" or "integrated circuits," are thin slices of semiconductive material (usually silicon) in which layers of electronic switches connected by thin wires have been laid.Each switch is functionally a transistor.Nowadays it is common for chips to contain several thousand switches.Chips are commonly manufactured by laying a stencil, often referred to as a "mask," on top of a layer of semiconductive material, and then etching or imprinting the circuitry pattern on the layer through one of a number of different processes.See inkfra note 16.Chips perform two different kinds of functions in modern computers.Some are memory units which store information (data or program instructions), either permanently (known as "read only memory" or "ROM" chips because the computer can only "read" the stored information, it cannot change or "write" new information into such a memory device) or temporarily (known as "random access memory" or "RAM" chips, capable of receiving and temporarily storing data, and allowing changes to be made in what is stored in the cell).Other kinds of chips serve as the central processing units of computers, that is, as hardware components that are responsible for execution of computer program instructions.