A method, system and program product for merging cloned and original
circuit shapes such that a union thereof does not include a notch. The
invention determines, for a cell including an original circuit shape and
at least one overlapping clone of the original circuit shape, whether
each clone corner point of each overlapping clone is within a threshold
distance of a corresponding original corner point of the original circuit
shape; and generates, in the case that each clone corner point of each
overlapping clone circuit shape is within a threshold distance, a union
of each overlapping clone and the original circuit shape such that the
union does not contain a notch. The union is generated using a point code
that sets a new position for a union corner point to remove a notch based
on the original shape's direction and the edge orientations previous to
and next to the corner point.