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Mark Cohen （柯恒）

Mark Allen Cohen (柯恒) is currently the Senior Technology Fellow at the Asia Society of Northern California and an Edison Fellow at the University of Akron School of Law. He also serves as a Non-Resident Scholar at the University of California Haas School of Business and University of California, San Diego, and the National Bureau of Asian Research. He previously served as the first Intellectual Property Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of International Relations at USPTO. In total, he has over 30 years private, public sector, in house and academic experience on IPR issues in China. This blog represents the opinions of Mark Cohen and any guest authors only and should not be construed as the position of any third party.

Reading the SPC IP Court’s 2025 Annual Report: Data, Composition, and Reporting Structure

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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.

Comparing the Metrics on China and Intellectual Property

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China’s success in meeting IP-related metrics highlights a broader challenge for comparative ranking systems: they often measure what is easiest to quantify—such as patent and trademark filings—rather than how IP systems actually function in practice. While China has shifted from quantity to “quality”-oriented indicators, these remain metric-driven and closely tied to national planning goals, including commercialization, industrial output, and global portfolio development. By contrast, indices like the U.S. Chamber’s International IP Index and the World Justice Project emphasize legal and institutional conditions, but may underweight how effectively private rights are enforced in real-world settings. A more balanced approach would focus on the operation of civil remedies, transparency across all forms of enforcement, treatment of foreign and domestic actors, the functioning of private licensing markets, and the system’s responsiveness to new technologies—areas that are harder to quantify but more indicative of a well-functioning IP system.

New Trade Secret Protection Rules in China

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China’s recently released 2026 trade secret rules are best understood not as a major legal reform but as an administrative modernization of an enforcement system badly in need of an update. Although international pressure played a role, the rules largely respond to China’s own technological development and growing need to protect confidential information. They show that IP change in China is driven at least as much by domestic economic evolution as by foreign demands.

Seeking Truth Through Facts in Innovation & US-China Relations

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A brief essay that reflects on the meaning of “seeking truth through facts” (实事求是) as both a classical Chinese scholarly method and a contemporary challenge in U.S.–China policy discourse. Drawing on its origins in the Book of Han, its later use by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and my own experience moderating an Asia Society program on innovation, the piece explores how facts are often distorted by politics, emotion, and narrative convenience. Using examples from intellectual property debates and the misuse of statistics, it argues that factual rigor remains indispensable, especially when facts challenge deeply held beliefs.

Post-Filing Data in Chinese Pharma Patents: Why It Took So Long — and What Finally Worked

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Recently, the Supreme People’s Court of China (SPC) upheld a decision of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court reversing a China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) invalidation decision and confirming the validity of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide compound patent. Although the final written decision has not yet been publicly released, official summaries indicate that the court accepted post-filing experimental data where “the technical effect can be derived from the original specification” (技术效果可由原说明书得出), reversing an administrative invalidation decision. Public reporting further indicates that the dispute turned on whether CNIPA would accept post-filing experimental data demonstrating semaglutide’s surprising pharmacokinetic effects in animal models, where the application as filed contained no experimental data.

Reforms to China’s Patent Injunction Practice in a Domestic Comparative Perspective

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Injunctions in Chinese patent are deeply rooted in Chinese IP civil and administrative practice. Due to the complex nature of China’s legal system, any analysis of the need for reforms to China’s patent litigation system should also take into account the nature of China’s civil patent system, the availability of injunctive-type relief from its administrative system, the potential impact of such reform on other civil remedies., as well as the potential impact on foreign litigants.