More than a year after the passage of a US law requiring companies to report on their use of "conflict minerals" there continues to be confusion about what conflict minerals are and what companies are required to do. Compounding the issue, some press reports misstate the law, saying that companies are required to avoid using conflict minerals when instead they are required to conduct and report on due diligence on this issue. Other reports focus on cobalt and copper from the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – materials that are neither classified as conflict minerals, nor come from a conflict zone area. In our work with companies on this issue, we often find it helpful to start by developing a clear definition of what "conflict minerals" should mean for a specific company...From our perspective, there are three core aspects of the definition: material type, geography of origin, and relationship to the conflict. How a company chooses to define each of those three areas has significant implications for how they address it. [refers to Motorola Solutions]