Japan[3] and European Community (EC) countries soon followed suit[4] and enacted their own, similar laws protecting the topography of semiconductor chips.

From Brooktree, ¶ 23: The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 was an innovative solution to this new problem of technology-based industry.

The application must be accompanied by identifying material, such as pictorial representations of the IC layers so that in the event of infringement litigation, it can be determined what the registration covers.

The term is a relic of the original form of the bill that became the SCPA and was passed in the Senate as an amendment to the Copyright Act.

The terminology became unnecessary when the House of Representatives insisted on the substitution of a sui generis bill, but the SCPA as enacted still continued its use.

The ordinary test for illegal copying (mask work infringement) is the "substantial similarity" test of copyright law,[9] but when the defense of reverse engineering is involved and supported by probative evidence (usually, the so-called paper trail of design and development work), the similarity must be greater.

But research and innovation in the design of semiconductor chips are threatened by the inadequacies of existing legal protection against piracy and unauthorized copying.