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.
Essentially Derived Varieties and The Role of Leading Cases in Chinese Plant Variety Protection
Editor’s Note: Plant Variety Protection (PVP) is a little-discussed topic in China’s IP regime. Indeed, this blog has only reported on PVP-specific issues once before, and once in the context of the […]
Justice Tao Kaiyuan and the Role of the Judiciary
Justice Tao Kaiyuan of the Supreme People’s Court, who had been to the United States in 2015 delivering important speeches on rule of law, has recently published an article on “Giving Full […]
A Pair of Experiments in the Beijing IP Court
Back in 2012, I noted that “[t]he Chinese civil judiciary is pursuing reform and gaining experience, as Deng Xiaoping noted, by crossing the river by feeling the stones. A disproportionate part of […]
China IPR - Intellectual Property Developments in China 