Patent ID: 8488866

Claim:
A method of inspecting a mask pattern for judging presence of pattern defect in a plurality of chip patterns formed on an EUV lithographic mask, said method comprising: acquiring a referential measurement pattern by irradiating light or electron beam onto a referential chip pattern contained in a referential inspection area, which is selected as a reference for comparison out of said plurality of chip patterns, and by capturing reflected light, secondary electron or reflected electron from said referential inspection area using an imaging unit; acquiring a comparative measurement pattern by irradiating light or electron beam onto a comparative chip pattern contained in a comparative inspection area, which is selected from the plurality of chip patterns but other than said referential chip pattern, and by capturing reflected light, secondary electron or reflected electron from said comparative inspection area using an imaging unit; detecting positions of the acquired referential measurement pattern and the acquired comparative measurement pattern; correcting said referential measurement pattern and said comparative measurement pattern, based on at least one of first correction data for correcting said referential measurement pattern and second correction data for correcting said comparative measurement pattern, loaded from a flare map storage block which stores flare correction data used for correcting an influence of flare possibly generated in EUV lithography for each area in a mask pattern, the first correction data corresponding to the position of the referential measurement pattern, the second correction data corresponding to the position of the comparative measurement pattern; and judging presence of pattern defect by comparing the thus-corrected referential measurement pattern and the thus-corrected comparative measurement pattern.