The Oriental Bicolour is any cat of Oriental type, either longhaired or shorthaired and in any pattern including colourpoint, which has white areas on its coat caused by the white spotting gene.
There are differences in the way that Oriental Bicolours are registered in different organisations. Some will register Bicolour Oriental Shorthairs and Bicolour Siamese/Seychellois separately, maintaining a genetic segregation between long and short coats and colourpoint and solid patterns. This effectively fragments different groups of Oriental Bicolour. The GCCF registration policy for the breed allows for all the groups to be bred together so that cats carrying the genes for long hair of colourpoint are not considered variants. Permitted outcrosses are Siamese, Balinese, Oriental Shorthair and Oriental Longhair. All offspring are registered as Oriental Bicolours and cannot be registered under the breed of their outcross parent. The only variants are cats which do not inherit white spotting; these are registered as "SH/LH of Oriental Type" without a breed number and cannot be shown, but can be used in breeding programs.