Editing Foundry model (section)

==Financial and IP issues==
Like all industries, the semiconductor industry faces upcoming challenges and obstacles.

The cost to stay on the leading edge has steadily increased with each generation of chips. The financial strain is being felt by both large merchant foundries and their fabless customers. The cost of a new foundry exceeds $1&nbsp;billion. These costs must be passed on to customers. Many merchant foundries have entered into joint ventures with their competitors in an effort to split research and design expenditures and fab-maintenance expenses.

Chip design companies sometimes avoid other companies' patents simply by purchasing the products from a licensed foundry with broad cross-license agreements with the patent owner.<ref>
{{cite book
 | chapter = When the chickens come home to roost: The licensed foundry defense in patent cases
 | title = Proceedings of COMPCON '94
 | author = R. H. Abramson
 | date = February 28 – March 4, 1994
 | pages = 348–354
 | doi = 10.1109/CMPCON.1994.282907
 | isbn = 978-0-8186-5380-3
 | s2cid = 2957002
 }}</ref>

Stolen design data is also a concern; data is rarely directly copied, because blatant copies are easily identified by distinctive features in the chip,<ref>
{{cite web
 | url = http://www.design-reuse.com/articles/15105/a-security-tagging-scheme-for-asic-designs-and-intellectual-property-cores.html
 | title = A Security Tagging Scheme for ASIC Designs and Intellectual Property Cores
 | author = Carol Marsh and Tom Kean
 | work = Design & Reuse
 }}</ref>
placed there either for this purpose or as a byproduct of the design process. However, the data including any procedure, process system, method of operation or concept may be sold to a competitor, who may save months or years of tedious [[reverse engineering]].