Intellectual Property Protection Via Hierarchical Watermarking

Intellectual property copyrights are protected by means of patents and nondisclosure agreements. In many cases however copyright laws cannot be effectively enforced due to the difficulty of proving or even detecting infringement. This problem is addressed in the paper using a scheme known as watermarking. The method consists of implanting a semi-transparent unique signature in the circuit’s intrinsic structure, without disrupting its functionality. A formalization of the watermarking problem is presented in the context of hierarchical IC design. Algorithms are proposed for implanting and detecting watermarks. The concepts of robustness against forgery and theft tracking are analyzed and examples are presented to show the feasibility of the approach.

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