Intellectual Property Law

Semiconductor Sector and International Economic Espionage

Perhaps, you are in the know when it comes to intellectual property law and patent law in the semiconductor industry. If so, then you realize all the ways intellectual property can be torn from your grasp. Each year there are a huge number of very high-profile cases of patent piracy, employees breaking non-compete agreements, and outright espionage. Andy Grove, of Intel once wrote a book “Only the Paranoid Survive” and well when it comes to intellectual property there hangs 100s of millions of dollars in the balance – so, I’d say he’s right on the money.

There is a very good book I’d like to recommend to you which will explain exactly what is going on and has been going on in the Semiconductor Sector for years now. This is a book I do own, and have personally sat down with the author and barraged him with questions about the industry. He knows his stuff, so I bought his book and got my autographed copy. The name of the book is:

“Economic Espionage – Checkmate” by Steve Manning, Published by Sneakaboard Press, Green Valley, AZ, (2010), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0-9844662-3-8.

The author Steve Manning is the founder of Pioneer Semiconductor Company, which is a NASDAQ traded public company. Steve also worked as a consultant at International Technical Marketing. He has devoted himself to a lifetime of learning, and also teaches a class at UCR University of California at Riverside’s Palm Desert, CA campus. Steve started out as a US Navy Electronics Technician. Quite frankly to put it bluntly; Steve knows his stuff.

Manning does a brilliant job humanizing, personifying, and personalizing the back door deals of corporate and industrial espionage that goes on behind the scenes. The United States and our greatest creative geniuses, entrepreneurial companies, and most technologically advanced corporations are being ripped off blind. This has been going on for nearly five decades in the semiconductor sector, and it goes on still today.

Indeed, I find Steve’s book a wake-up call within a fictional work of intrigue, with spies, good guys, and bad guys. Our national treasures of intellectual property are being stolen nearly as fast as we can create them; and our patent process is making it difficult to find justice, and the cases take far too long to try in court. Meanwhile, the next generation or several others are available making the enter rendering of any potential decision worth less than the paper the judgment was written on.

The competition for innovation in Silicon Valley is like no other, and folks come to the US and homestead in Silicon Valley with ill-intent from the get go, with their job to steal intellectual property and make millions, if not hundreds of millions in the process.

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AustinDevos