By Peter Clarke
LONDON – IPC, the industry association that looks after interests of companies involved in electronics interconnection, has released IPC-1071, a standard on printed circuit board intellectual property protection.
The standard is titled Best industry practices for intellectual property protection in printed board manufacturing and it is intended to assist printed board manufacturers in the development of requirements for the protection of intellectual property (IP) for their customers in commercial, industrial, military and other high reliability markets, the IPC (Bannockburn, Ill.) said.
The standard addresses issues such as physical and information security, employee data access, computer networks, destruction of scrap material amongst other issues. The standard focuses on protection of the inherent IP designed into the printed board, from the customer to the printed board manufacturer.
“The importance of this standard to the industry is underscored by the number of prime OEMs and top tier commercial and military product manufacturers that participated in the development of the standard,” said IPC Intellectual Property Committee co-chair Michael Moisan, vice president of technology at TTM Technologies.
The standard is expected to help the electronics industry save money by providing a single standard to which companies can certify. “We believe that having one standard for the industry for intellectual property and using independent auditors will protect our customers and control cost of implementation,” said Moisan.
The IPC’s Intellectual Property Committee plans to develop an IP certification program for the industry. This topic will be the focus of the committee’s next meeting at 10:00 am on Wednesday, April 13, 2011, at IPC APEX EXPO in Las Vegas. At the event representatives of commercial and defense OEMs and PCB manufacturers will discuss best practices for protecting IP, as specified in IPC-1071.
