i'm pretty sure i read 8" was a proposed height to differentiate between clones and plants, but i've also known that anything with roots is a plant.
it's probably best to assume, for your defense budget, that anything with leaves (and sometimes not even...) is counting against you, i.e. old root-balls, twigs in your fireplace, leaves on the floor......
maybe a jury will empathize with you about the science of 'sea of green' and look past plant counts to understand yield, but that jury isn't going to pay your lawyer.....