China’s 2026 IC Layout-Design Reform and Lessons for Brazil’s IP Agenda

From PADIS to Semicon: why Brazil’s early legal architecture now needs renewed investment, broader protection and credible enforcement

China’s 2026 revision of its Regulations on the Protection of Integrated Circuit Layout-Designs is an exemplary update. The rise of CXMT—China’s leading domestic DRAM producer and, by fourth-quarter 2025 sales, the world’s fourth-largest—shows how patient capital, manufacturing scale, research, intellectual property and capital markets can reinforce one another. Brazil recognized much of the same institutional logic in 2007, when Law No. 11,484 created PADIS and a sui generis right for integrated-circuit topographies in the same statute. That architecture was forward-looking, but the industrial scale, registry use and enforcement practice built on it remain limited.

China’s legal reform is best understood against the economics of memory chips. On July 27, 2026, CXMT Corp. began trading on Shanghai’s STAR Market after issuing approximately 6.69 billion shares at RMB 8.66 and raising approximately RMB 57.9 billion—about US$8.6 billion—in Asia’s largest IPO of the year to that date. Its shares closed 466% above the offer price, giving the company a first-day market capitalization of roughly RMB 3.3 trillion.

CXMT’s importance is industrial, not merely financial. DRAM is the working memory that temporarily stores data in smartphones, computers, servers and artificial-intelligence systems. Advanced processors require large quantities of fast memory, so a domestic DRAM supplier reduces one important point of dependence on foreign producers exposed to geopolitical and export-control risk. CXMT’s listing also took place during an AI-driven memory cycle in which data-centre investment and demand for high-bandwidth memory had tightened supply and improved the outlook for established memory producers.

According to CXMT’s prospectus, the company held 7.67% of global DRAM sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, ranking fourth worldwide and first in mainland China. Revenue rose from RMB 9.09 billion in 2023 to RMB 61.80 billion in 2025. In 2025 alone, CXMT spent RMB 9.59 billion on research and development—15.52% of revenue. (Investing.com)

IP agenda as continuous innovation tool

China’s State Council promulgated the revised Regulations on the Protection of Integrated Circuit Layout-Designs on July 23, 2026. The 54-article regulation takes effect on October 15, 2026 and comprehensively updates the regime introduced in 2001. Chinese authorities explained that rapid changes in integrated-circuit technology and industry made it necessary to improve registration, protection and administration, codify workable practices and align the regime with related laws and international obligations.

Few changes stand out

First, it expressly allows protection for layouts of integrated circuits performing integrated photonic, quantum and similar functions.

Second, applicants must submit an originality statement identifying the original design regions, principal design features and corresponding functions. The deposited copies or drawings must clearly show the allegedly original portions.

Third, the China National Intellectual Property Administration, or CNIPA, will conduct a preliminary examination and may reject applications with evident statutory defects.

Fourth, CNIPA may revoke an invalid registration on its own initiative, and any person may request revocation on specified grounds. A revoked right is treated as having never existed.

China also strengthened enforcement. Damages may be based on the right holder’s loss, the infringer’s profit or a multiple of a reasonable licence fee. Where the infringement is intentional and the circumstances serious, courts may award punitive damages of up to five times that base amount, and a statutory ceiling of RMB 5 million applies where none of the three measures can be established.

At the same time, the regulation retains research and evaluation exceptions, reverse engineering that produces an original layout, independent creation, exhaustion, innocent-acquirer protection and non-voluntary licensing in defined public-interest or competition circumstances. (CNIPA)

CNIPA received 11,482 layout-design applications and issued 10,302 certificates in 2025; (CNIPA)

2007 PADIS program and IC topography IP right

Brazil anticipated the need for an integrated semiconductor policy almost twenty years ago. Law No. 11,484/2007 created the Program of Support for the Technological Development of the Semiconductor Industry—PADIS and established a specialized IP regime for integrated-circuit topographies in the same statute.

PADIS linked fiscal incentives to domestic research, development and innovation. It required part of the investment to be conducted with accredited Brazilian research or teaching institutions and provided that protection in Brazil should be sought for intellectual property resulting from approved R&D projects. (Presidência da República)

The 2007 statute got the structure right. It recognized that semiconductor policy must connect capital expenditure, engineering capability, universities and research institutions, domestic value creation and ownership of intangible assets.

The limitation has been scale and continuity rather than the absence of a policy concept. In 2025, INPI received only seven applications for integrated-circuit topographies and granted five registrations. China received roughly 1,600 times as many applications that year. The figures are not directly comparable—China’s semiconductor industry and domestic market are far larger—but they show that layout-design registration is an established part of Chinese IP practice and remains a marginal instrument in Brazil. (Serviços e Informações do Brasil)

Brazil has recently renewed the industrial-policy side of the framework. Law No. 14,968/2024 created Brasil Semicon to strengthen research, development, innovation, design, production and application of semiconductors, displays and solar panels. It also authorized BNDES and Finep to structure financing and support instruments.

Decree No. 13,065/2026 added governance, investment, workforce, infrastructure, trade-facilitation and monitoring measures. It arrived, it should be said, more than a year after the six-month regulatory deadline the 2024 law itself imposed. The question is whether Brazil will now modernize its specialized IP regime with the same seriousness. (Presidência da República)

What Brazil protects today

Brazilian protection is contained in Chapter III of Law No. 11,484/2007 and administered by the National Institute of Industrial Property—INPI. It is a sui generis registered right, distinct from patents, copyright, industrial designs and trade secrets.

Those forms of protection may coexist. A semiconductor company may use patents for technical inventions, topography registration for the physical layout, copyright for software, trade secrets for process know-how and contracts for ownership, foundry access and licensing. (Presidência da República)

Protected subject matter

The statute defines an integrated circuit as a final or intermediate product with at least one active element and some or all interconnections integrally formed on or within a piece of material, intended to perform an “electronic function.”

A topography of an integrated circuit is a series of related images representing the three-dimensional configuration of the layers of an integrated circuit, with each image showing all or part of the geometric disposition or surface arrangements at a stage of conception or manufacture. (Presidência da República)

Protection is available only for an original topography: it must result from the creator’s intellectual effort and must not have been common or ordinary among relevant technicians, specialists or manufacturers when created. A combination of commonplace elements may qualify if the combination as a whole is original.

Protection does not extend to the underlying concepts, processes, systems, techniques or stored information. Registration is constitutive; creation alone does not confer the exclusive statutory right. (Presidência da República)

Exclusive rights and duration

Registration grants the exclusive right to:

• reproduce the topography, in whole or in part, including by incorporating it into an integrated circuit;
• commercially import, sell or distribute the protected topography or an integrated circuit incorporating it; and
• commercially import, sell or distribute a downstream product incorporating that circuit, for so long as the unlawful reproduction remains present.

The term is ten years from the earlier of filing or first commercial exploitation. An application indicating first exploitation more than two years before filing is definitively archived. (Presidência da República)

Research, reverse engineering and independent creation

Brazilian law contains important competition and innovation safeguards. The exclusive right does not reach acts undertaken for analysis, evaluation, teaching or research.

It permits the creation or exploitation of a later topography resulting from the analysis of a protected one, provided that the resulting topography is not substantially identical. It recognizes independent creation and exhaustion after authorized market placement.

An innocent downstream user that lacked knowledge, and reasonable grounds for knowledge, may continue disposing of existing stock or prior orders after notice, subject to payment equivalent to a voluntary-licence royalty. (Presidência da República)

Licensing, validity and enforcement

The statute permits voluntary licensing, public non-commercial use and compulsory licensing to protect competition, prevent abuse of rights or economic power, or address inadequate supply in price, quantity or quality.

A registration may be declared wholly or partly invalid by a federal court, with INPI as a necessary party, including for lack of originality, inadequate identification or late filing. Invalidity may also be raised as a defence.

Civil relief includes prohibition of unlawful conduct, coercive monetary penalties and damages. Specified unauthorized commercial acts also constitute crimes punishable by one to four years’ detention and a fine. (Presidência da República)

The photonics question

Brazil’s principal substantive gap is technological wording. The statute remains tied to an “electronic function,” whereas China now expressly addresses photonic and quantum integrated circuits.

INPI has nevertheless shown interpretive flexibility. In November 2025, it issued a topography certificate to the Federal University of Campina Grande for an “Integrated Photonic Circuit with Hexagonal Architecture for Optical Processing.” That grant is encouraging, but an administrative registration does not provide the same certainty as a technologically neutral statutory definition, particularly if validity is later contested in court. (INPI)

How to file an integrated-circuit topography in Brazil

The current procedure is electronic. INPI Normative Instruction No. 109/2019 governs the e-Chip system and expressly revoked Normative Instruction No. 10/2013. The older 2013 instruction remains historically relevant but should not be treated as the operative filing rule.

A sound filing process has practical stages.

1. Confirm eligibility, ownership and timing

The application must concern one topography; printed-circuit-board layouts are excluded. The applicant should identify the creators, confirm employment, services, university and assignment arrangements, determine whether protected third-party topographies are incorporated with authorization, and establish the earliest commercial-exploitation date.

An applicant domiciled outside Brazil must appoint a representative domiciled in Brazil with authority to act administratively and judicially and to receive service.

2. Prepare the technical deposit

The application includes a Portuguese-language description of the topography and its function in PDF, together with drawings in GDS, GDS-II or OASIS format sufficient to identify the design and characterize its originality. Other drawing-file formats are not accepted under the current INPI guidance.

Applicants should also preserve version histories, original design files, contributor records, tape-out documents, evidence of first exploitation and provenance for third-party IP cores. Those materials may later be more important in litigation than the certificate alone.

e-Chip system and examination

The electronic form identifies the applicant, creators, title, prior-exploitation date, technical materials, third-party authorizations where relevant, representative documents and the signed Declaration of Veracity.

The applicant may request six months of secrecy at filing and may withdraw during that period within the statutory conditions.

INPI performs a formal—not patent-style substantive—examination. Any formal requirement must be answered within 60 days or the application is definitively archived.

Decisions and the eventual grant are published through INPI’s Industrial Property Gazette, which applicants should monitor throughout the proceeding. (Presidência da República)

Conclusion

China’s 2026 reform and CXMT’s ascendancy express the same strategic judgment in different forms.

CXMT is the economic half of that judgment: sustained finance, manufacturing capacity, research, market demand and IP portfolios can turn a domestic entrant into a credible participant in one of the world’s most concentrated technology markets.

The revised regulation is the legal half: as the industry becomes more technologically sophisticated and commercially valuable, the rules governing protectable subject matter, registration, validity, licensing and enforcement must keep pace.

Brazil should treat this as a prompt to pick up the thread it began in 2007. By enacting PADIS and integrated-circuit topography protection together, it recognized that industrial incentives and ownership of innovation are parts of one structural policy.

The weakness has been the limited scale and continuity of investment, the very low use of the specialized right, outdated technological language and the absence of a developed enforcement practice. (Presidência da República)

Brasil Semicon creates a timely opportunity to complete that original project. Brazil should invest more consistently across design, specialized manufacturing, photonics, packaging, testing, tools, skills and commercialization. In parallel, it should modernize topography protection through technologically neutral coverage, a clearer registration record, efficient validity review, reliable damages rules and procedures capable of handling confidential semiconductor evidence. (Presidência da República)

The lesson has not changed since 2007: Semiconductor capability is built when industrial policy, research institutions, private capital and enforceable intellectual property move together.

China is now updating both its chips and the legal infrastructure around them. Brazil should do the same—not because IP rights alone produce innovation, but because innovation supported by public policy should be capable of being owned, licensed, financed and enforced.

Keywords: Brazil; China; CXMT; DRAM; PADIS; Brasil Semicon; integrated-circuit topography; IC layout-design; semiconductor intellectual property; INPI.