IC設計產業的智慧財產權訴訟與保護策略之研究－以國內四家IC設計公司具體訴訟案件為例

台灣IC設計公司稍具規模且有上市櫃的超過70家，雖只針對智財權訴訟與保護策略之相關主題這部分，也無法有效迅速地做到每家公司都予以詳細研究。於是本論文採取判斷抽樣之方式，依正（正面性）、老（歷史久）、負（負面性）、大（規模大）四個面向分別選了義隆電子、太欣半導體、聯華電子與聯發科這四家公司做較深入探討，並由公開資料觀測站所公開的財報或年報中的重大承諾事項及或有事項中，整理其內的訴訟事件，並針對相對應的智財議題作進一步分析，這部分屬於定性方面的探討。由於整個訴訟事件整理出來也有七十幾件，本論文將其整理成Excel 表格，進一步做定量分析，得到一些客觀上的數據比對，也順利證明出藉由「正老負大」之方法所選出的四家公司的確有整體IC設計業之代表性。透過以上的定性與定量分析，最後對IC設計產業智財權保護策略之建議有以下七點，分別是：一. 化被動為主動二. 化干戈為玉帛三. 隨時關注ITC案件最新動態四. 國家應讓智財之訟爭儘速終結五. 面對電腦程式著作權侵害的訴訟時，先冷靜分析再採取法律行動六. 修正專利研發之偏差七. 加強工程師智財相關法律之教育。其中最具體且最容易做到的是第三點，因為從數據看來，美國ITC的台灣IC產業相關案件具有代表性與前導性，再加上因為案件不多與資料完備，相較於複雜的美國法院訴訟體系，所以ITC案件是容易觀察分析的，值得台灣所有IC設計公司的法務或研發部隨時注意。

關鍵字

IC設計；義隆電子；太欣半導體；聯華電子；聯發科；智財訴訟； ITC ；專利評價

並列摘要

Taiwan ’s IC design companies are slightly larger and more than 70 public companies. Even though the study puts focus on the relevant topics of intellectual property litigation and protection strategies, we cannot effectively and quickly carry out the detailed research for each company. Therefore, this paper adopts the method of judgment sampling to shorten the time-consuming process. According to the four aspects of large scale, long history, positive and negative , MediaTek, Syntek, Elan Electronics and UMC are chosen respectively to conduct in-depth analyses, and their litigation events relevant to intellectual property issues in Risks Associated with Litigations of the Annual Reports published by Market Observation Post System are collected wholly and organized into Excel table. This study includes qualitative and quantitative analyses and obtains some objective data comparison, which also successfully proves that the four companies selected by the "Large/Old/Positive/Negative" method are indeed representative of all the IC design industry in Taiwan. Through the above qualitative and quantitative analysis associated with the protection strategy of intellectual property in the paper, the recommendations for the IC design industry are : 1. Regain the initiative 2. Beat swords into ploughshares 3. Keep track of the latest ITC cases. 4. The government should let intellectual property disputes end as soon as possible 5. Analyze the issue before legal actions in the face of the infringement of the copyright of computer programs in the IC design industry. 6. Quality is more important than quantity of the patent ownership 7. Strengthened the education of engineers regarding intellectual property laws. The most specific and easiest part of the above recommendations is the third one because ITC cases are usually the pilot run of the prospective litigations and the number of ITC cases is smaller. It is worth paying much attention to USITC's Taiwan IC industry-related cases for the legal departments and R&D of the IC design companies in Taiwan all the time.