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Comment by KeplerBoy | Hacker News Reader

How did this happen? Why does the US gov own the IP of technology developed in the netherlands by a dutch company?

Other posters have given the answer but here is the answer in an informative podcast released just over a month ago with some details on the development process from some ASML PR folks in San Diego (they have offices in the USA).

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/13/1212604208/asml-euv-extreme-u...

thanks, i appreciate the link and will give it a listen.

Key EUV research was funded by the US government, and developed at Lawrence Livermore/Berkeley Labs & Sandia national labs. The IP is owned by the US government and they created a licensing vehicle, Silicon Valley Labs, to commercialize the technology. ASML acquired licenses to these IPs with its acquisition of Silicon Valley Labs in 2001.

My calendar says it is 2025. Shouldn't these patents have expired by now?

I think this IP ASML uses is more like Coca Cola or KFC recipe I did not see those going into public domain as those are trade secrets not patents.

Do you have source for this?

ASML acquired SVGI (Silicon Valley Group, doesn't seem to have been created as a licensing vehicle, apparently founded in 1977), but according to wikipedia it already had access to the technology (SVGI, Intel, and some other US chip manufacturers had access to the tech).

Nowhere in any of the press articles about the acquisition they mention EUV as being a factor (seems like standard industry consolidation instead). If anything they were really far from delivering EUV at the time (it took close to 20y).

It’s because the US National Laboratories developed all the initial technology to enable EUV. ASML just builds the machines.

Why would state something that is not correct. Cymer is a fully owned company by ASML.

It seems that you are confusing ownership of the company with licensing of the IP it uses.

AMD produces their own x86 under IP licensed by Intel (and vice versa).

It seems you are confusing the details and conditions of a contract never disclosed publicly, of base research, where a EU based company spent 20 years and billions of EU funds to create a workable product.

In any case if the US adrenaline fueled diplomacy, starts violating hundreds of years old borders of it's allies, respect for ambiguous IP Laws, will be pretty low in the list of priorities. :-)

> It seems you are confusing the details and conditions of a contract never disclosed publicly

The details have never been disclosed but it is well known that this agreement fell within the domain of national security and export controls.

Here's a press release [1] directly from ASML that references these export controls. Even though this PR actually relaxing DUV controls with respect to the U.S., it reaffirms that "EUV systems are also subject to license requirements."

[1]: https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2024/dutch-gover...

"To access EUV technology, Intel in 1997 formed the EUV LLC, which entered into a cooperative R&D agreement (CRADA) with DOE. As part of this agreement, Intel and its partners would pay $250 million over three years to cover the direct salary costs of government researchers at the national labs and acquire equipment and materials for the labs, as well as cover the costs of its own researchers dedicated to the project. In return, the consortium would have exclusive rights to the technology in the EUV lithography field of use. At the time, it was the largest CRADA ever undertaken."

In return, the consortium would have exclusive rights to the technology in the EUV lithography field of use

https://issues.org/van_atta/

This is really a major simplification and glosses over a lot. US National laboratories were involved but certainly didn't "develop all the initial technology". This page on the ASML website gives a good overview: https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/making-euv-lab-to-...

That is such an oversimplification that it's honestly insulting.

Then go read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithograph...

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories were funded in the 1990s to perform basic research into the technical obstacles. The results of this successful effort were disseminated via a public/private partnership Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRADA) with the invention and rights wholly owned by the US government, but licensed and distributed under approval by DOE and Congress.

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