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 […]
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.
Mark Allen Cohen (柯恒} is a Distinguished Senior Fellow, Director and Lecturer of the Asia IP Project at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley. In total, he has nearly 40 years of private sector, public sector, etc., in-house and academic experience on IPR issues in China, including numerous publications and awards. This is his private blog.
China IPR - Intellectual Property Developments in China 