Who owns ASIC tech rights?

I'm curious about who actually holds the rights or trademarks for ASIC technology. Can any company just go ahead and create their own ASIC tech for crypto mining, or are there some intellectual property laws in place that we should know about? Imagine if the trade tensions between the US and China escalate, and a Chinese firm holds the rights to ASIC technology. Would that stop companies in Silicon Valley from making their own ASIC chips for the US market? From what I gather, there don't seem to be any broad IP rights on the tech itself, but I feel like some specific designs or implementations could be patented. I've been digging around for info on this, but I can't find much. If anyone has insights or sources, please share!

In the same way as Intel, AMD, Cyrix and maybe others too were all making x86 processors in the 90s, I think that anybody can make its own ASIC chip. I think that only the (internal) design can be patented.

^^ Correct If one bothers to look it up, all ASIC means is Application Specific Integrated Circuit. That can be anything: a watch or alarm clock chip, sound chip in a toy, crypto calculator, etc. Just means it is a custom chip designed to do 1 thing (or at most a very limited number of things) which cannot be changed. It is the actual circuit design and layout of the chip  - not its function - that can be copyrighted.

Yeah, the issue is just cost. You'd need some very deep pockets to break into the market at this point. To be competitive you need to use the smallest nodes, and the cost to complete a design is >$100 million. It is getting more expensive at every new ASIC node, so the more time goes on, the less likely new players will emerge.  You'd need some pretty compelling IP in advance to convince investors to pony up that cash to jump into a market that is already dominated by Bitmain. And I think if someone came up with some new great optimization, they'd be more likely to sell it directly to one of the major players or try  to license it to all of them rather than take on the risk of building a new company from scratch.

In the same way no one is holding the patent for the blockchain technology, I think anybody can make ASIC-like mining equipment as long as one is not copying the very products other manufacturers are producing and selling. It just like the technology on computers, what can be patented is your own brand of computers, specifications which can not yet be found with what others are offering and many improvements on what you are offering. This can be reason why there are a number of cryptocurrency mining hardware.

Anyon can take advantage of ASIC technology since the tech itself isn't an intellectual property of anyone. What would be illegal though is if other companies will directly copy the mining rigs of other companies itself. For example is if a company copies any of Bitmain's antminers with similar specs and design or without literally any kind of changes then the company might have violated Bitmain's intellectual property.

So far theres no intellectual property right protection for ASIC as NotFuzzyWarm mentioned above that ASIC as a whole had been used on several gadgets thats why its impossible for a company to have its rights.Its always do concern about their products design and if some companies do tend to copy it out then thats time they can sue out.

By my understanding even if they have a patent on that technology other companies can still copy it in their own way by creating their own version out of it. What I mean about that is if they create an ASIC miner themselves they should not 100% copy the existing version, that is why what we are seeing is always a better version of the old version from any competing companies. This is why we see cars like the Hyundai Prius having the same form factor as the Toyota Prius but a lot of things varies from engines to the interiors of the car. In the legal world you can't really have that "unique" invention where you have a 100% guarantee to rule the market.