Please join us on February 2, 2023, at 5 PM Pacific Time on zoom to discuss the recently proposed amendments to China’s Trademark Law!
BCLT Forthcoming Roundtable on Proposed Trademark Law Revisions
China Understands the Strategic Value of Intellectual Property. Does the United States?
Why does China increasingly treat intellectual property as a strategic instrument of national development, international influence, and global governance while the United States often continues to view it primarily through the lens of enforcement and compliance? Building on my recent article with former USPTO Director David Kappos in The National Interest, this essay argues that intellectual property should be viewed as a central issue of foreign policy rather than as a specialized area of law. Recent Chinese writings emphasize the development of an indigenous intellectual property knowledge system and greater international “discourse power,” while U.S. policy remains focused on criminal enforcement campaigns and “IP theft.” If the United States wishes to preserve a market-oriented international intellectual property system, it must modernize its own laws, renew engagement with China’s civil IP institutions, emphasize transparency and private rights, and recognize that competition increasingly extends to the institutions, concepts, and norms that will govern the future of innovation.
Data as Intellectual Property: China’s Experiment
This article analyzes China’s Data IP experiment based on the “Three Types Separation” rule from the 2022 Data Twenty Measures. Three parallel registration systems run by the China National Intellectual Property Administration, the National Data Administration and the Ministry of Finance regulate data IP, data property rights, and data assets respectively. Pilot results and Zhejiang surveys reveal domestic private enterprises dominate registrations, mostly for internal data product development. Courts treat Data IP certificates as preliminary evidence under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Despite booming registration volume, institutional coordination and immature data trading markets remain challenges for the system.
QBPC, RDPAC and Distinct Foreign Voices in China’s IP System
The closure of the Quality Brands Protection Committee (QBPC) and the apparent absorption of the Research and Development Pharmaceutical Association Committee of China (RDPAC) into new institutional structures marks the end of an important chapter in the development of China’s modern intellectual property system. Founded during China’s WTO-accession era, both organizations played influential roles in fostering dialogue, advancing legal and regulatory reforms, and helping foreign and Chinese stakeholders identify areas of common interest. Drawing on examples ranging from anti-counterfeiting enforcement to pharmaceutical intellectual property reform, this article argues that their effectiveness often stemmed not from exerting pressure, but from aligning foreign experience with China’s evolving development priorities. Their disappearance reflects China’s transformation from a country primarily concerned with protecting foreign intellectual property into one with its own powerful innovation constituency. At the same time, it raises important questions about whether newer institutions can continue to represent concerns that uniquely affect foreign companies while preserving the technical exchanges, professional engagement, and practical cooperation that contributed to decades of intellectual property reform.
Measuring FRAND Value in ZTE v. Samsung
China’s recent global FRAND determination in ZTE v. Samsung has attracted attention because it valued ZTE’s SEP portfolio at nearly twice the level of a contemporaneous English court decision. This article argues that the more important issue is not the royalty rate itself, but the methodology used to measure technological contribution. The Chongqing court relied heavily on declared SEP-family shares, portfolio metrics, territorial weighting, and other quantitative indicators that are closely associated with longstanding Chinese innovation policies encouraging patent accumulation, standards participation, and portfolio expansion. By comparing the decision to earlier Chinese FRAND jurisprudence, the English Samsung decision, USPTO research, and broader debates over Chinese patent statistics, the article explores whether these metrics accurately measure technological contribution or instead reward portfolio scale and geographic concentration. The case may signal an important shift in Chinese FRAND adjudication from disputes over the meaning of FRAND to a deeper debate over how FRAND value itself should be measured.
Using and Misusing Chinese Patent Data
Patent statistics are frequently cited as evidence of China’s growing technological strength, but patent counts by themselves do not address qualitative concerns. Moreover, they often measure much more than innovation alone. They can reflect commercialization strategies, export orientation, government incentives, and differences in patent systems across countries. This article examines how patent data of various kinds can be used to assess China’s competitive position, while also highlighting the limitations of relying on patent counts alone. Drawing on recent U.S.-China filing data, design patent trends, overseas filing behavior, and common measures of patent quality, it argues that patent statistics are most useful when interpreted in context and alongside other indicators of technological and commercial performance.
Upcoming Senate Judiciary Hearing
was asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 22, 2026. The link is here: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/stealth-stealing-chinas-ongoing-theft-of-us-innovation-04-22-2026.
Analyzing Trade Secret Protections: 2025 Civil Trends in China
This blog reviews Zhao Ye’s report on trade secret adjudication by the SPC IP Tribunal. Based on 11 published cases from 2025, the report highlights a sharp increase in damages, systematic reversal of lower court decisions, expanded use of burden-shifting, and stronger sanctions for evidence spoliation. In my view, these decisions also function as a form of strategic signaling, indicating a more rights-protective orientation in judicial practice. However, they do not yet constitute binding, system-wide legal change, which would require further judicial interpretations or formal designation as guiding cases. The emerging judicial trends may make Chinese civil courts a more viable forum for trade secret enforcement.
China’s ASI Strategic Retreat and WTO Compliance
China appears to have taken a meaningful step toward complying with the WTO’s DS611 ruling by stepping back from its controversial use of anti-suit injunctions in SEP disputes, with no new ASIs reported since the decision and indications—primarily through WTO statements—that the Supreme People’s Court withdrew the policy. However, implementation remains incomplete. The underlying doctrine has not been clearly repudiated, key judicial materials remain difficult to locate, and earlier decisions continue to be inconsistently published, often in anonymized or unstable form. The WTO arbitrators’ expansive interpretation of “decisions of general application” raises additional concerns, as it extends TRIPS transparency obligations beyond formal precedent in ways that may not align with how Chinese courts actually develop policy. At the same time, the United States’ attempt to narrow transparency obligations was rightly rejected. With parallel developments in Europe and the UK, anti-suit injunctions are no longer uniquely Chinese, but part of a broader global struggle over jurisdiction in SEP disputes. China’s response reflects a cautious retreat rather than a full policy reversal, leaving important questions about transparency, judicial signaling, and future practice unresolved.
Regifting, Signaling, and Implementation: Comparing China’s IP Commitments Across the 2026 NTE, Phase One, and the 2016 JCCT
The recently released 2026 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (March 31, 2026) (the “NTE”) provides a useful opportunity to reassess U.S.–China intellectual property negotiations, particularly the Phase One Trade […]
Reading the SPC IP Court’s 2025 Annual Report: Data, Composition, and Reporting Structure
This post examines the SPC IP Court’s 2025 Annual Report by focusing on underlying data, case composition, and reporting structure rather than headline claims. It shows that foreign participation is concentrated in administrative appeals, that punitive damages and trade secret cases remain a small share of the docket, and that plant variety protection is receiving increased attention. The post argues that careful attention to denominators, omissions, and how data are presented is necessary to understand what the report actually shows.
China IPR - Intellectual Property Developments in China 