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.
RIPPLES IN STILL WATER: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS ON IP IN CHINA
The Chinese IP environment continues to pursue its own domestic needs-driven agenda. Criminalization of trade secret matters, while an area of concern to the United States, is also important to China’s development […]
A Hot Tale of Cool Teas
Just recently the lunar calendar passed into the period of “Grain Rain”((谷雨, guyu) in China. This is a time of increasing temperature and high humidity, which is ideal for growing grains. The temperature […]
SAIC Announces Beginning of Revision Process to Anti-Unfair Competition Law
SAIC has announced on its website that it has “formally” begun the topic of revision the Anti-Unfair Competition Law (which includes trade secrets): http://www.saic.gov.cn/fldyfbzdjz/gzdt/201403/t20140303_142680.html. (《反不正当竞争法》修法课题正式启动). According to this press report, the SAIC Competition Enforcement […]
SIPO’S 2012 National IP Development Situation Report
SIPO released a 71-page report on the 2012 National IP Development Situation (2012年全国知识产权发展状况报告) on June 5, 2013, the fifth anniversary of SIPO’s adoption of the National IP Strategy Outline. Although this is […]
Supreme People’s Court Annual Report Shows Continued Meteoric Growth in Litigation and Increasing Professionalism of the Court
It is IPR Week in China, and once again there will be a flurry of reports that were presumably embargoed by Chinese agencies for the festivities of the week. It’s a bit […]
China IPR - Intellectual Property Developments in China 