According to an article coauthored by Mark Cohen in the September 2021 issue of Nature Biotechnology, government planning and targets for patents in China, while boosting overall quantity, negatively impacted overall quality. Quality concerns were manifested by a clear end-of-year trough in forward citations of patents filed near year’s end.
An Update on Data-Driven Reports on China’s IP Enforcement Environment
Several useful empirical reports on China’s IP environment have been released in the past few weeks. I summarize four of them: Trademark Litigation Jerry Xia and his colleagues at the Anjie firm […]
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 […]
The Trump Administration and China IP Diplomacy: Old Wine In a New Bottle?
Two major China IP events occurred in late November and December. One of them was the long-awaited first phase of a settlement of the US-China trade war. The second was the nomination […]
Foreign Investment Law Implementing Regs Open For Public Comment: Administrative and Punitive Enforcement Ascends Again

The Ministry of Justice had published a draft of the Foreign Investment Law Implementing Regulations for public comment. Chinalawtranslate has prepared an English translation of the proposed regulations and of the law […]
Collaboration or Confrontation: Beyond the False Dichotomy in US-China IP Relations
Recently several writers have criticized the Trump administration’s strategic choice of confrontation over collaboration with China. Among them was an open letter published in the July 2, 2019, Washington Post, “China is Not […]
The 600 Billion Dollar China IP Echo Chamber
“Most people use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamp post, more for support than illumination.” Mark Twain What are the losses due to “IP Theft” from China? On a recent […]
Catching up With The Literature on Forced Tech Transfer…

(from the OECD report, discussed below) While President Trump has extended the truce on the trade war, academic and business debate around the nature of “forced technology transfer” (FTT) practices in China […]
Towards a Better Understanding of “Forced Technology Transfer” Policies in China and Their Strategic Implications
In August 2017, President Trump issued an executive order setting in motion an investigation of China’s trade policies including IP, technology transfer, and investment policies. The “Section 301” report on this investigation […]