IP protection for VLSI designs via watermarking of routes

Intellectual property protection (IPP) has become a major concern in today's CAD and ASIC/SOC industries. This paper presents a watermarking technique for IPP at the physical design level. We propose a method for embedding a watermark by modifying the number of vias or bends used to route the nets in a design. This technique is applicable to digital, analog and mixed-signal design, and has the ability to accommodate the noise tolerance and design intricacies of each.