Recently, the State Council promulgated the newly revised Regulations on the Protection of Layout-Designs of Integrated Circuits (the "Regulations"), the first systematic revision of the Regulations in more than 20 years. The revisions mainly involve expanding the scope of protection, improving application and registration procedures, increasing damages for infringement, and promoting the utilization of layout-designs. Among them, the most important revision is the expansion of the scope of protection: "layout-designs of integrated circuits integrating photonic, quantum and other functions" are brought within the statutory scope of protection of the Regulations, resolving the difficulties in intellectual property protection for new types of integrated circuits.

I. Integrated circuit technology has entered an era of transformation

To protect the exclusive rights in layout-designs of integrated circuits and encourage innovation in integrated circuit technology, China's Regulations on the Protection of Layout-Designs of Integrated Circuits were promulgated in 2001. At that time, based on the realities of industrial development and drawing on international legislative experience, protection focused on layout-designs of traditional integrated circuits for electronic transmission and electronic computing. Today, transistor manufacturing processes for traditional integrated circuits are approaching their process and physical limits, while disruptive technologies such as photonics and quantum continue to emerge, propelling integrated circuits into a post-Moore era in which competition centers on new architectures, new mechanisms, new materials and new devices. While countries continue to explore ways to break through the physical limits of feature sizes of traditional integrated circuits, they are also opening up new technological paths for integrated circuits. China's 15th Five-Year Plan explicitly calls for "upgrading industries such as high-end chips, optoelectronic devices, basic software and industrial software," "implementing strategic scientific and technological deployments in artificial intelligence, quantum science and technology, biotechnology and new energy," and, in the integrated circuit field, "advancing breakthrough applications of technologies such as compute-in-memory, three-dimensional integration and optoelectronic convergence." The newly revised Regulations respond in a timely manner to the technological frontier by bringing "layout-designs of integrated circuits integrating photonic, quantum and other functions" within the scope of protection — an accurate reading of and positive response to the development of integrated circuit technology.

II. Achieving all-round protection for layout-designs of new types of integrated circuits

The Regulations are among the more technical and specialized pieces of legislation in the intellectual property legal system, and the concepts of "integrated circuit" and "layout-design of integrated circuits" epitomize this feature. The Regulations clearly define "integrated circuit" and "layout-design of integrated circuits" respectively, balancing the technical characteristics of integrated circuits with the legal requirements for intellectual property protection; they establish the "three-dimensional configuration" criterion for identifying layout-designs and provide that products containing a layout-design should perform an electronic function, thereby accurately defining the legal concepts of traditional microelectronic integrated circuits and their layout-designs. However, with the deep convergence of photonics, quantum information and microelectronics, frontier technologies such as optoelectronic converged integration, silicon photonics integration and quantum chips are iterating at an accelerating pace, and the functional dimensions of related products have gone beyond traditional single electronic signal processing. Strictly applying the traditional definition of integrated circuits would make it difficult to effectively protect innovation.

Although protection of layout-designs of new types of integrated circuits has been achieved in practice through case-by-case examination, as technology evolves rapidly, integrated circuits increasingly exhibit blurred device characterization and diversified functional carriers. The contradiction between the broad scope at the technical level and the narrow determination at the legal level will gradually grow, and problems such as insufficient basis for establishing rights and inconsistent administrative and judicial adjudication standards will inevitably arise in practice, requiring a fundamental legislative solution. On the basis of retaining the traditional concept of integrated circuits, the newly revised Regulations explicitly provide that "layout-designs of integrated circuits integrating photonic, quantum and other functions may be protected in accordance with the provisions of these Regulations," effectively resolving future questions of characterizing integrated circuit devices and carriers, and providing a forward-looking, professional response to the legal protection of intellectual property in layout-designs of integrated circuits.

III. Safeguarding the innovative development of China's integrated circuit technology

This revision of the Regulations raises the level of intellectual property protection for layout-designs of integrated circuits and is an important measure to safeguard the innovative development of China's integrated circuit technology. The design stage of integrated circuits sits upstream in the industrial chain and determines the performance, power consumption and competitiveness of chips. As technology develops, the product iteration cycles of photonic chips and quantum chips are becoming even shorter, and layout architecture design — such as waveguide arrangement, qubit layout, three-dimensional heterogeneous interconnection and layout topology optimization — has increasingly become a focal point of technological competition. The revised Regulations will further strengthen the intellectual property protection barrier for frontier integrated circuits and build an institutional system suited to the pace of China's integrated circuit technological innovation. Since 2022, the number of applications for registration of layout-designs of integrated circuits containing photonic and quantum devices in China has begun to increase, showing a trend of large-scale filings after 2024. It can be foreseen that the revised Regulations will resonate with the times, further leverage the protective advantages of the exclusive right in layout-designs, stimulate the design enthusiasm of innovators, and promote the innovative development of China's integrated circuit technology.

Source: China National Intellectual Property Administration, Policy Interpretation column. Date of original: August 3, 2026. Original link: https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/art/2026/8/3/art_66_207421.html