Renesas Technology Corp.

Hitachi, Ltd.

Yousuke Yukawa

Hirotaka Nishizawa

Atsushi Shiraishi

Haruji Ishihara

Kouichi Kanemoto

An IC card has a card substrate having semiconductor integrated circuit chips mounted thereon and a plurality of connector terminals formed thereon. The connector terminals are exposed from a casing. The connector terminals are laid out in plural sequences in staggered form between sequences adjacent to one another forward and backward as viewed in an IC card inserting direction. Owing to the adoption of the staggered layout, a structure or configuration wherein the amounts of protrusions of socket terminals of a card socket are changed and the socket terminals are laid out in tandem, can be adopted with relative ease. If a connector terminal arrangement of a downward or low-order IC card is adopted as a specific connector terminal sequence as it is, whereas a function dedicated for an upward or high-order IC card is assigned to another staggered connector terminal arrangement, then backward compatibility can also be implemented with ease.

Growing community of inventors

Kokubunji, Japan

Yousuke Yukawa