State Council, Protection of Integrated Circuit Layout Designs Regulations

Promulgated: April 4 2001
Effective: October 1 2001
Applicability: For the purposes of the Regulations, "integrated circuit layout design" (layout design) means a 3-D configuration incorporating at least two components of which at least one is an active component in a partially or fully connected circuit, or such a 3-D configuration for the manufacturing of integrated circuits (Article 2).

Main contents: The Regulations provide that a Chinese natural person, legal person or other organization that has created a layout design has exclusive rights thereto under the Regulations, and the same applies to layout designs created by foreigners if the layout design is first put into commercial use in China or if the home country of the foreign creator and China have signed a layout design protection agreement or are both parties to an international treaty on layout design protection (Article 3). A holder of exclusive layout design rights has the exclusive right to duplicate the relevant layout design in whole or in part or put the layout design or the integrated circuit or thing that incorporates the layout design into commercial use (Article 7). Such exclusive rights arise from the registration of the layout design with the State Council department in charge of intellectual property and vest in the creator (Articles 8, 9 and 14). Where the layout design is the product of a number of collabourators or a commissioned project, the ownership of the exclusive rights shall be agreed upon by the parties concerned or, by default, decided in favour of the all collabourators or the commissioned party (Articles 10 and 11). The exclusive rights to a layout design are protected for a period of 10 years from the date of its registration or its first commercial use but no longer than 15 years from the date of its completion (Article 12). These rights may be assigned and licensed to other parties (Article 22). The Regulations also set out the procedures for registering layout designs (Part Three).