Intellectual Property Rights Protection

Intellectual Property Rights Protection

China has a sound legal system for the protection of intellectual property rights, providing a wide range of relief and channels of enforcement. China is also a contracting party of most international intellectual property conventions.

Chinese laws protect the following categories of intellectual property rights: patents (including inventions, utility models, and appearance designs), trademarks, geographical indications, copyrights (including computer software) and neighboring rights, layout designs of integrated circuits, new varieties of plants, trade secrets, etc.

China adopts a system of intellectual property protection covering both administrative and judicial channels.

In 2014, special courts for intellectual property rights cases in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou all held special trials on intellectual property rights. In 2019, the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China began to hear intellectual property appeals from professional and technical intellectual property right cases across the nation. Since then, these courts have gradually unified standards of adjudication for intellectual property right cases. Up to now, the people’s courts have  established a specialized trial system for intellectual property rights consisting of the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People’s Court, Beijing  Intellectual Property Court, Shanghai Intellectual Property Court, Guangzhou  Intellectual Property Court, Hainan Free Trade Port Intellectual Property Court, and 26+ intellectual property courts in Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuhan and other places.

The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) is responsible for the protection of intellectual property rights, trademark registration, patent review, registration for the layout designs of integrated circuits, issuance of administrative rulings such as review and invalidation of trademarks, patents, and layout designs of integrated circuits, and the development and implementation of a unified verification system for geographical indications. In terms of intellectual property protection, the administrative enforcement of trademark and patent law is under the jurisdiction of the Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team of Market Regulation. The State Administration of Market Regulation and local market regulators at or above the county level are responsible for the administrative enforcement for trade secret protection. The National Copyright Administration, provincial copyright bureaus, and local cultural market comprehensive law enforcement agencies are responsible for administrative law enforcement of copyrights, thus they constitute the national system of copyright administrative law enforcement.

China recorded a stable growth of patents and trademarks applied by foreign entities in 2022. The number of valid invention patents applied by foreign entities in China totaled 861,000. The patents involved 58,000 foreign enterprises, 2,000 more than that in 2021. The figure of valid trademarks registered by foreign entities rose to 2.03 million. The growth fully demonstrates that the efforts in IP protection have provided a sound business environment for foreign-invested enterprises in China.

In addition, the CNIPA has worked with other authorities, such as the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission, to exchange IP-related messages involving foreign-invested companies to ensure their voices, difficulties and requests could be heard.

If any of your intellectual property rights is infringed, besides resorting to legal remedy by law court or IPR authorities, you may apply to China Customs for Customs enforcement of IPRs.