engineering provisions if a defendant introduces some—it is impossible to say how much, since we have no judicial guidance²⁵—variation on the original design.

It is possible that, in time, Congress will enact a legislative "fix" that will remedy at least some of the law's shortcomings. However, as the technology continues to develop, will Congress, or the law itself, keep pace? Unlike the Copyright and Patent Acts, the sui generis SCPA has neither a flexible and expansive subject matter nor a historic body of principles and precedents for adapting to changes without repeated congressional action.²⁶

Moreover, the solutions in the United States, be they judicial, legislative or administrative, may differ greatly from the solutions abroad, since for a sui generis scheme of protection there is no common body of copyright or patent principles or multilateral treaty to guide the courts, legislatures, and administrative agencies in other countries.

I acknowledge with gratitude the substantial contributions to this chapter by Jesse M. Feder, Esq., my colleague at Schwab Goldberg Price & Dannay. In the technical discussion, I am heavily indebted to the expertise of Drs. Praveen Chaudhari, Tak Ning, and Webster Howard, of the IBM Corporation, for an appreciation of the present state of the semiconductor industry and its possible future directions. In all cases, however, I am solely responsible for the interpretation that appears in this chapter and for any error or omission it might contain.