China claims global chip leadership thanks to new legal definition of 'integrated circuits'

China has changed its legal definition of semiconductors. The National Intellectual Property Administration yesterday issued an expert opinion on recent changes to the regulations governing intellectual property laws as applied to chips. That document, attributed to Guo He, from the School of Intellectual Property at the Renmin …

[xyz123]

In other news, China states it has FTL drives, wormhole technology, the secret formula of eternal youth AND nuclear missiles that only target people who don't enjoy chow mein.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile our Great Leader (tm) gave a speech where he claimed the CHIPS act required the semiconductors to be transgender

In other faker news, California has banned the term "semiconductor" as discriminatory - claiming we should use the word "differently conducting"

[Paul Herber]

Nobel Prizes should be given to anyone who can spell their own name!

[Conor Stewart]

Not sure the international definition could include optical and quantum chips.

> “a product … in which the elements, at least one of which is an active element, and some or all of the interconnections are integrally formed in and/or on a piece of material and which is intended to perform an electronic function.”

It seems to state that it needs to be an active component (so various combinations of resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc. don't actually count as an IC, I wonder if certain sensors count where they just change resistance?) it needs to have at least some of its interconnects within the chip and it needs to perform an electronic function. That final bit is where it could get a bit unclear. A purely optical or quantum chip might not have an electronic function, although most will for getting data in and out and for control.