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Today the Virtual Component Exchange announced that the VCX Licensing Forum has completed its work on a model license agreement for semiconductor intellectual property targeted for programmable logic devices (PLD SIP).

The Forum’s PLD License Development Sub Group, set-up in February this year, has spent the past several months developing an open licensing agreement, designed to address the unique requirements of the PLD SIP market.

The license can be embedded in custom IP exchange facilities, also available from VCX, or supplied in a standalone application tool; it will also be part of the VCX DealRoom suite of tools.

“The PLD group was drawn from participants in the industry who saw the need for PLD SIP licensing transactions to be more easily repeatable over time,” said Nick Popper, Senior Legal Counsel for VCX. “In the same manner as we did with the ASIC model agreements, we assembled attorneys and business people representing a broad cross-section of relevant industry players and consolidated their inputs into a single document.”

The result of this process is an agreement that can be customized to the needs of a particular transaction in short order, enhancing the time-to-market advantages that PLDs enjoy.

"We believe the VCX Licensing Forum and the open PLD license agreement are positive steps toward broader acceptance of IP in FPGA designs, offering designers decreased time spent in license negotiations and shortened time to market," said Yankin Tanurhan, senior director of the IP Solutions Group at Actel. "Additionally, this license will further enable designers to easily access and license Actel's IP cores targeted to our highly secure flash- and antifuse-based FPGA solutions."

“PLD designers need fast access to IP for their designs, otherwise the time-to-market benefit of using PLDs over ASICs is compromised,” said Justin Cowling, Director of IP Marketing for Altera Corporation. “Approving the VCX open IP licensing agreement will greatly streamline the legal steps customers must presently go through to purchase IP from multiple vendors.”

Other participants involved in the development of the licence include Amphion, RF Engines and Tality as well as companies representing consumers of PLD SIP.

“Over the years Amphion has licensed a great wealth of wireless and video intellectual-property for the gamut of programmable device architectures. Indeed Amphion was first to market with PLD-optimized cores for FFT, JPEG and MPEG-2. Amphion has contributed its licensing expertise to this initiative in the expectation that a standard neutral agreement will expedite customer fulfilment and expand the market for Amphion’s range of VCX-listed IP cores.” said JG Doherty, CEO of Amphion.

As with the other VCX license agreements, the PLD SIP agreement can be used to fit many of the current licensing models prevalent in the industry such as single or multiple design use.

“The successful development of this license demonstrates the suitability of VCX as a forum for solving such issues in a collective, inclusive and open manner.” said Nick Popper.

About VCX
The VCX is a provider of custom software solutions for IP exchange and supply chain management, and developer of the central, Internet registry and exchange for semiconductor IP: the VCX TradeFloor. Powered by VCX TransactionWare(TM), the TradeFloor tools link the Engineering, Procurement and Legal functions of both Buyers and Sellers with a common toolset and language. Alignment of data evaluation, access and contracting protocols between Buyers and Sellers, using industry standards, dramatically accelerates the speed of SIP transactions, fulfilling the common business imperative of getting more products to market in shorter time cycles. Distributed Internet access to the VCX TradeFloor is provided through the VCX Gateway - distributing VC data and transaction agents to the web-based market, extending the reach and value for Buyers and Sellers alike.

To find out more about the VCX TradeFloor, or VCX software solutions, visit the web site at www.thevcx.com.