Patent 7966585 was granted and assigned to Mentor Graphics on June, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A system for preparing mask data to create a desired layout pattern on a wafer with a multiple exposure photolithographic printing system. In one embodiment, boundaries of features are expanded to create shields for those features, or portions thereof, that are not oriented in a direction that are printed with greater fidelity by an illumination pattern used in the multiple exposure printing system.